[djm]

Once I saw an episode of the UK version of 'Dragons Den'. A couple of guys pitched some adventure sports equipment they had built and one of the investors, Peter Jones, told them off for not wearing suits to do the pitch and refused to invest in them.

After watching that, I developed the following opinion:

Any time somebody is evaluating you (for investment, for a job etc) they are going to have an idea in their head of what they want. They will put you through a filtering process and decide whether or not to let you through.

What most people don't consider is that the filter is not just there to help the decison maker, it's there to help them too. You get to present yourself however you want so you can choose the inputs to the filter.

If you don't want to have an investor who would think your choice of clothing is important, don't wear a suit. If you don't want to work somewhere that chooses to interview people based on the amount of bullshit in their CV, don't put bullshit in yours, and so on.

edit: I forgot to address the question with regards to customers. In that case the answer seems to be "whatever the customer expects" since you presumably don't want to put a barrier in the way of them buying your stuff.

[joshbaptiste]

Peter Jones would not have invested regardless of what whey wore. The lack of a suit was the excuse to easily dismiss the pitch. Investors simply care about ideas and how much revenue can be generated from the idea plain and simple.