[ad_1]
On Saturday night, when Kamala Harris took the stage and made history at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, as vice president-elect of the United States, she did so in full recognition of the weight of the moment and in full recognition. Of all those who came before She is so many firsts: first woman to be vice president, first woman of color to be vice president, first woman of Southeast Asian descent, first daughter of immigrants. She is the representation of so many promises finally fulfilled, so many hopes and dreams.
How do you begin to express that understanding, embody the city that shines on a hill? For the next four years, that will be part of the job.
She said so – “although I may be the first woman in this office, I won’t be the last” – and pointed it out, wearing something she hadn’t worn in any of her first moments since she joined Joe Biden as his No. 2 ( or, indeed, in the months before when she herself was running for the Democratic nomination): a white pantsuit with a white silk blouse with a bow. The two garments have alternately been charged and celebrated symbols of women’s rights for decades, but in the last four years they have gained even more potency and power.
Also read: Kangana Ranaut calls Joe Biden ‘Gajni’, says he won’t last more than a year
The white pantsuit: a nod to the fight to break the ultimate glass ceiling, from suffragettes to Geraldine Ferraro, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and the women of Congress. A garment of one color signified, as one of the first mission statements of the Congressional Union for the Suffrage of Women published in 1913 put it, symbolizing “the quality of our purpose.” Lately filled with frustration; now, finally, transformed into a beacon of achievement.
The blouse with a bow: the uniform of the working woman par excellence in the years in which they began to flood the professional field; the female version of the tie; the power accessory of Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister. And then all of a sudden, a potentially subversive double meaning at the hands of Melania Trump, who wore a pussy bow blouse after her husband’s “pussy grabbing” scandal.
Now, again, claimed.
The question was not who made the clothes; it was not about marketing a brand (although, on the subject of “rebuilding better”, the demand was from Carolina Herrera, an American company). The point was that wearing those clothes, making those decisions, on a night when the world was watching, in a moment that would be frozen forever, was not fashionable. It was politics. It was for posterity.
And it was the beginning of what will be four years in which everything Harris does matters. Obviously what she wears is only a small part. But in his first place, in his rise to the highest realms of power, he will become a model for what that means. How, as a woman, as a black woman, you claim your seat at the highest table. Clothes are part of that story. In a way, it’s the way those at distant tables connect with him.
Yes, what Biden wears matters too. His airmen have practically become his doppelgänger; the blue tie he wore on Saturday night, representative of both his party and the blue skies that (hope) to come. Presidents have always used clothing as part of their political toolbox. John Kennedy distinguished himself from the previous generation by opting for single-breasted suits over the more formal crossover styles favored by Roosevelt and Truman.
Barack Obama did the same, often dropping out of the tie. George W. Bush used his cowboy boots as a badge of origin and attitude. Donald Trump used his too-long five-alarm red ribbons to signal masculinity and send everyone to a wormhole master of the universe.
But what Harris uses, and will use, could matter more. Why should we pretend otherwise?
(A website, WhatKamalaWore, has already popped up for tracking.)
As Dominique and François Gaulme wrote in the 2012 book Power and Style: A World History of Politics and StyleClothing, from its earliest origins, was developed “to communicate, even more clearly than in writing, social organizations and the distribution of political power.”
And when the person with that power is a pioneer, when defining a new kind of leadership, understanding those lines of communication and how to use them is key. Not because she is a woman, but because she will be the first vice president.
Hillary Clinton came to understand this over a career in which she seemed at first to dismiss fashion and then, as first lady, resent it, before finally embracing it as a useful tool.
It began when he joined Twitter in 2013 with a biographical note that included the descriptors “pantsuit fan” and “hair icon,” along with “FLOTUS” and “SecState.” When he opened his Instagram account in 2015, his first post was a photo of a clothing bar in a variety of red, white and blue jackets and the caption “Tough Choices.” During an Al Smith dinner before the 2016 election, he joked that he liked to refer to tuxedos as “formal trouser suits.” She assembled her clothes as needed.
This is an option Harris herself knows well. She has embraced the political tradition of the trouser suit foreshadowed in 1874 at the first National Convention of the Dress Reform League, when, as reported in The New York Times, an attendee stated: “This reform means pants. They are freedom for us and they give us protection! The pants are coming. “But she did not partake of the Crayola-colored pantsuit tradition of the previous generation: Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel.
Although Harris has been praised for her love of Converse (and has spoken of her Chuck Taylors more than any other clothing item), and for her Timberlands, when it comes to professional situations, she has generally preferred a colorful uniform dark: black, navy blue, burgundy, maroon, gray, with matching shell blouses, heels and pearls. Those were the costumes he wore to the Democratic National Convention and debates.
They were often from New York designers (Prabal Gurung, Joseph Altuzarra), but they never looked too fashionable. They seemed serious, prepared, sensible. She even wore a black suit for the 2019 State of the Union, when many of her fellow congressmen had joined to wear white.
So his choice, this time, to finally join that tradition could not have been an accident. (Her two young granddaughters, one of whom recently appeared in a YouTube video talking about her desire to be president, also wore white.) It was deliberate. Not giving her credit is giving her less credit than her due.
Perhaps, rather, it is a sign of what to expect. Which will continue as it has, with practical and elegant outfits that do not get in the way of your day or require a lot of response from the peanut gallery. (We, in turn, can go back to Kimye). That the details – the pearls, the heels, the sneakers – will be important. And then, from time to time and when the situation and the theater require it, he will deploy a surgical dress strike that hits everyone where it counts.
