Picking An Outfit: How To Dress For Sex Work Success

Dressing for success is a concept in every industry, even sex work. Personalising how you dress is a way to entice clients, and in this industry, first impressions matter! Whether it’s meeting a client in an intro at the parlour, looking hot in your advertising photos, or showing up for a first booking, you want to maximise your impact, and what you wear is one way to do it. Here are some tips for how to dress for sex work success.

What do sex workers wear?

It’s not all just lingerie.

Sex workers wear a wide variety of outfits depending on the work we do. You might see strippers dancing in Pleasers, string bikinis, booty shorts, or box dresses. Brothel workers might wear a bodysuit or hot bra and panties set. Depending on the brothel they work at, they may even wear evening dresses, if the dress code commands it. A dominatrix needs a wide variety of outfits depending on the fetishes she provides: latex, PVC, leather, corsets, boots, etc. Escorts often wear something sexy underneath, but they also might want something fancy or cute to wear on top for dinner dates and public meets. Are they meeting a client at a private bar? The local pub? An anarchist meeting? You know they’ll dress to blend right in.

What’s your field? What do you need for your wardrobe? These are all just suggestions; in reality, you can wear whatever you think might best convey your sexy attributes to a potential client. I knew a worker who once wore pyjamas into a brothel intro and nabbed the customer.

Pick your vibe

What look are you going for? Are you the girl next door? Collect together some cute dresses or ripped jeans and play up that vibe. Do you want to be a blonde Barbie bombshell? Bring on the bleach and your best pink micro bikini! Are you a bookish type? Nerd it up in glasses and bring your client’s librarian fantasies to life.

Pick the vibe that works best for you and dress accordingly. Make sure your fit aligns with your work persona so your marketing and your service are aligned. And have fun with it! One vibe I really loved (and that clients went nuts for) was ‘Shiny Mistress’, so I cultivated a huge collection of PVC, often dressing head to toe in gleaming plastic.

Pick a piece to stand out in

In her book Happy Endings, Bella Green wrote: “To avoid the curse of wearing black (rule 63: never wear black, every girl is wearing black and you won’t stand out among all the other intros) I wore seven-inch candy green Pleasers.” This is excellent advice. If you want to stand out from the crowd, pick a piece to define your look. It doesn’t have to be bright green platforms; it can be anything that separates you from every other worker on shift or all the other escort profiles on the search page.

Maybe you stand out because your penchant for dressing ‘norm-core’ delineates you from your sex worker peers. Or your armpit hair poking out from your sleeveless dress titillates clients who are intrigued by that. Find a statement piece, or something that highlights what’s different about you, and be exceptional!

Work with your best assets

You’re not always going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but by dressing to play up your best attributes you’re going to appeal to the clients who are looking for what you’ve got. It’s important to expand your definition of what an ‘asset’ can be in order to find what works for you. Your best asset in sex work might be something about your body that you can highlight with your outfit, but it could also be a ‘vibe’ that you dress to emphasize.

In the beginning of my career, I often dressed to highlight my breasts, as they were the most obvious asset I thought I had to work with. But over time, I found that I could dress to play up my ‘cheeky’ work persona. I bought PVC dresses in short, cutesy cuts and wore shiny, frilly knickers that could be glimpsed from underneath. This really drew in the clients, because I was dressing to highlight something special about me that was different from the other Mistresses on shift.

Dress for the clients you want

What you wear sends a message. It’s one way to say to the world, “this is who I am.” It’s also a way to announce, "this is what I want.” Dressing doesn’t just convey who you are, it is a means to communicate who you want to be. Make sure your outfit speaks to the clientele you’re looking to cultivate. If you are going for the foot fetishists, find some peep-toe heels to hook them in. If you love the nerdy clientele, maybe you want to play up your quirks or keep your glasses on to look more bookish.

Once you know your alter ego well enough, you can do some market research by trying new signature items and seeing what the result is. Maybe you’ll want to splash out on some new outfits, or attend a clothes swap–my local sex worker peer org runs these every so often. It can be a great way to grab something new to you.

The right outfit can boost your confidence

If you look good, you feel good. Picking something that makes you feel great is going to boost your confidence, and clients will see that. Your outfit doesn’t need to be from the fanciest lingerie brand, or some couture latex designer. It could be a box dress, or a hand-me-down from a fellow worker, but if it makes you feel like a sexy, powerful creature, then you’re going to come across that way. I had this one dress, a short fit and flare PVC number. It wasn’t anything special, but it fit like a dream, and when I wore it I felt like a long-legged, cheeky, shiny princess. Clients could catch that vibe. They could sense that I felt hot, and that’s what they were looking for.

What you wear for sex work may vary depending on your field, but as long as you feel hot, stand out, and work with your own vibe, you’re going to look great.

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