Does What You Wear Change What You Communicate?
Does What You Wear Change What You Communicate? The Psychology of the Modern Suit
What happens when we put on a suit - to others and to ourselves? Unpack the psychology, craftsmanship, and gender codes of tailoring over drinks with designer Antje Bleek.
@Zoku Hotel Rooftop, Amsterdam
Ticket includes 1 drink from the bar on the house 🍷
About the talk
What actually happens when you put on a suit?
We often think getting dressed is just practical, but clothes quietly shape how other people read us - and how we feel about ourselves. In professional spaces, a tailored blazer is still the ultimate shortcut for confidence, competence, and authority. But why do traditional tailoring codes still hold such a grip on us? And what happens when we look at the suit through the experience of women navigating the tricky balance between authority, approachability, and femininity?
For this edition of Think&Drink, we are heading up to the Zoku rooftop with fashion designer Antje Bleek, founder of Amsterdam-based NOVEM STUDIO and former head of menswear formalwear design at Hugo Boss. After 15 years designing tailoring for houses like Jil Sander, Calvin Klein, and Boss, Antje is pulling back the lining to treat tailoring not as fashion rules, but as non-verbal communication.
Grab your drink on the house and join us for an informal, hands-on evening taking apart the psychology, the craft, and the hidden architecture of what we wear.
What to Expect:
Peeking inside the jacket: Look past the lining to see how canvas, shoulder construction, and proportions visually reshape the body.
Enclothed cognition: How what you put on your body triggers real shifts in how you think, focus, and feel in professional spaces.
Women and the authority puzzle: Unpacking why dressing for work as a woman comes with conflicting expectations, and how traditional tailoring codes still influence our workplaces.
Touch the fabrics: An interactive session with real garments, Italian suiting wools, textures, and colours - going far deeper than basic cliches like "blue means trust".
Ditching the rulebook: Moving away from rigid rules about what anyone "should" wear toward three practical questions: How do I want to feel? How do I want to be perceived? And does what I am wearing support what I am here to do?
Drinks and conversation: An engaging, relaxed talk followed by an open Q&A and rooftop drinks with a curious crowd.
About the Speaker
Antje Bleek has spent more than 15 years in fashion and tailoring, including design roles at Jil Sander, Calvin Klein, and Hugo Boss, where she led the design of menswear formalwear. Seeing how cut, construction, and proportion can completely transform a person - and questioning why that same care was rarely applied to the diversity of women's bodies and lives - she founded NOVEM STUDIO in Amsterdam. NOVEM creates contemporary made-to-measure tailoring designed specifically around women, combining traditional tailoring know-how with digital body measurement and on-demand craft.