“When you put on the black suit and the patriotic scarf, that does not tell people to pay attention,” she said. “It tells people: ‘I am boring. And maybe an F.B.I. agent.’ It presents the most bland version of yourself. It’s not going to inspire people to want to hear what you say. Let the men be boring. You can be different.”

This is easier said than done, however. At issue is the tension between two schools of thought, on the one hand, the traditional wisdom regarding female candidates and how they dress. “Your clothes should not speak for you,” said Rosana Vollmerhausen, the founder of DC Style Factory, a wardrobe consultancy that works with female and male political candidates. And on the other, the growing belief, apparent at W.C.S. Yale, that says that clothes should absolutely say something about who you are and what makes you different.

“We are living in a reality TV world,” Joel Silberman, a media trainer who runs a class titled Magnifying your Magnificence, told the class. “Everything about your presence has to be on purpose, and I need to see it in five seconds.” “See” being the operative word.

The question facing many candidates, in dress as in message, is how much of that should be about gender, and how you get beyond the stereotype. The female political candidate’s uniform developed largely as a feminized version of the men’s suit, chosen to demonstrate that women could fit into what was a male-dominated world.

But that does not necessarily mean that the opposite choice — the clichés of floral or frilly garments often associated with the word “girlie” — is the answer.

In 2012, Cécile Duflot, then the French minister for housing, stood up to speak at the National Assembly in a floral shirtdress and was met by catcalls and whistles. From other ministers. And at the campaign school many of the students were frustrated that the Dress to Win session seemed to focus on literal dresses, as opposed to personal identity.