Looking Good Is Not Shallow: On Style, Power, and Being a Black Professional Woman

I was invited to Nairobi to meet my coachees in person—women I had been journeying with on Zoom, across time zones, ambitions, and beautifully complicated lives. This was a big moment. There would be depth. There would be truth-telling. There would be strategy and courage and all the good, serious things.

And yet.

Instead of being nervous about the session I would lead, I was nervous about what I would wear.

Not the agenda. Not the facilitation flow. Not whether I’d remember that one brilliant framework. No. My mind was doing laps around questions like: Is this dress too much? Too little? Is this print saying Pan-African confidence or “trying too hard”? Are these shoes giving grounded leader or tired auntie?

It sounds shallow. I know. We’ve been trained—especially as women, and particularly as Black women—to apologise for caring about appearance. To say, quickly and defensively, “I know it doesn’t matter, but…”

Except it does matter.

How you dress and present yourself as a Black professional woman is not a frivolous concern. It is a statement—often several statements at once—about how you see yourself, how you expect to be treated, and how you navigate systems that were not designed with you in mind.

Let’s start with the basics: how you take care of yourself. Clothing is often the most visible proxy for self-regard. When you show up polished—not perfect, not overdone, but intentional—you communicate that you value yourself enough to prepare. That you didn’t roll out of bed and hope for the best. That you understand presence.

And presence, for Black women, is never neutral.

Our bodies have always been read. Interpreted. Projected onto. What we wear gets layered with assumptions before we’ve even said hello. Too relaxed and you risk being read as unserious. Too sharp and suddenly you’re “intimidating.” Too colourful and it’s “ethnic.” Too plain and you’ve “lost your culture.”

So yes, we think about clothes. Strategically. Constantly.

Take prints, for example. A bold Ankara dress or beautifully tailored kitenge jacket can quietly say, I am rooted. I am African. I am not shrinking to fit a Western template of professionalism. It signals a pro-Africa, pan-African identity without needing a manifesto.

But context matters. Print can empower—or overwhelm. The cut, the fit, the pairing all decide whether the look reads as confident leadership or Saturday wedding guest who got lost on the way.

And then there’s the other side: the safe, Western-coded uniform. The neutral blazer. The crisp white shirt. The pencil skirt. It works. It’s legible. It often buys you immediate credibility in rooms where people don’t know what to do with you yet.

Choosing it doesn’t mean you’re a sell-out. Sometimes it simply means you’re being tactical. The point is that the choice is yours, not defaulted to out of fear.

Make-up brings its own politics. The amount matters—not because there’s a right number of products, but because of the message it sends in different spaces. Full beat can be armour. It can say, I came prepared. I am visible on my own terms. Minimal make-up can say, I am comfortable. I don’t need to perform femininity to be taken seriously.

The danger is when either choice is driven by anxiety rather than alignment. When you’re asking, Will they like me? instead of Is this me?

Hair—oh, hair—deserves its own essay. Practicality matters. Nairobi heat, Lagos humidity, long conference days, site visits, late dinners. A hairstyle that looks great for 45 minutes but distracts you for eight hours is not the move.

Protective styles are not just aesthetic choices; they are operational decisions. Braids, twists, locs, natural styles pulled back with intention—they free up mental space. They allow you to focus on the work, not on whether your edges are surviving the day.

And yet, hair is still politicised. We all know this. Choosing natural hair in professional spaces can still feel like an act of quiet defiance. Straightening can feel like ease—or compromise—depending on the room and your own relationship with it.

Again, the key is agency.

Now, let’s talk bags, because bags tell the truth.

A bag reveals how you move through the world. What you expect to carry. How prepared you are for life to happen.

There is something iconic about the practical, slightly oversized work bag. The one that can hold a laptop, a notebook, a charger, lip balm, snacks, and perhaps the emotional weight of being “the first” or “the only.”

Enter the beloved Longchamp Le Pliage.

If you know, you know.

It is not flashy. It does not scream status. But it says: I travel. I work. I am efficient. It folds. It fits under airplane seats. It has been in taxis, airports, boardrooms, and coffee shops across the world.

Choosing a bag like that over something overly branded can be a deliberate rejection of performance. A quiet confidence that says, I don’t need my logo to enter the room before I do.

And this is really what looking good is about for Black professional women. Not impressing. Not conforming. Not rebelling for the sake of it.

It’s about coherence.

When how you look aligns with who you are and what you’re there to do, you feel grounded. You stop fidgeting. You stop overthinking. You occupy your body fully.

In Nairobi, once I finally decided on my outfit—something comfortable, intentional, unapologetically me—I noticed something interesting. The nerves shifted. The energy settled. I walked into the room present.

And that’s the real gift of getting dressed well.

It’s not about the clothes. It’s about removing friction between you and your power.

So no, it’s not shallow. It’s strategy. It’s self-knowledge. It’s care.

Looking good, as a Black professional woman, is not about fitting in. It’s about showing up whole—and letting the room adjust.