Bows, Beards, Camo and Pearls
Bows, Beards, Camo and Pearls
Can fashion be political? Isn't it always? What does power look like in 2024, and why?
Check out the sartorial choices of this year’s White House candidates—and the looks they’ve crafted for themselves to win support.
NEW YORK —The Harris-Trump debate went viral last week during Manhattan’s mega-buzzy New York Fashion Week—and for the iconic designers and runway show chroniclers tracking both events, the fact they were happening the same week seemed, in some ways, almost intentional.
“Cat Lady” t-shirts were being worn by a few Substackers attending some of the runway shows, sitting in the front rows next to celebrities and editors-in-chief. Harris/Walz camo-hunter hats also made the scene, with some show-runners spotted wearing them to a few high-profile gatherings—and not just by potential First Daughter Ella Emhoff. At a Prada press reception I attended, some of the designers and celebrity social climbers who usually flock to the company’s NYC events were joined this year by some of the “Hotties for Harris” supporters, a group of high-profile, GenZ influencers on TikTok and Instagram—some of whom I met last month at Chicago’s Democratic National Convention. “It’s interesting to see what different power people wear, and why,” said GenZ influencer Deja Foxx.
Fashion Week ended on 9-11, and last week’s Harris-Trump debate is no longer firing up hot-takes and talk-show fodder. But the race for the White House and the candidates’ fashion choices keep making headlines—and likely will through November.
Fashion today is a “mega meme,” explains Andrew Bolton, the chief curator of The Costume Institute at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. “It’s a mirror to our times, so it is inherently political. It’s been used to express patriotism, nationalism and sometimes, propaganda—as well as complex issues related to class, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality.” Political fashion can conjure society’s dreams, challenge its norms and help candidates create a brand face and voice for themselves to help voters see what they’re all about.
“Some people think that discussing political fashion is frivolous,” says Vanessa Friedman, a fashion critic for The New York Times, “but people are constantly making snap judgments when they see politicians”—especially those not yet known very well by the public, like Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and, especially, Tim Walz, her VP running mate. The GOP’s veep pick, J.D. Vance, is also new to the race. “Based on the candidates’ fashion choices,” Friedman said in an interview, “many people not tracking politics day-to-day are looking at (the candidates) and are deciding, ‘Do I like that person? Can I relate to that person? Do they look presidential?’”
The big takeaway this election year? What a candidate wears is no accident.
It’s strategic.
Here’s why.
Coaches and Rebels
The late Virgil Abloh of Louis Vuitton, the celebrated rebel creator of Off-White, said famously that “politics isn’t binary. It’s this system we’re all in and all the ways it manifests. There’s the politics on your phone and the politics on your street. And yeah, there’s the politics of your clothes. They’re intertwined, and you have to provide the context.”
Consider Tim Walz’s flannel shirts. Former President Barack Obama referred to them in his DNC speech last month, saying: “You can tell those flannel shirts (Walz) wears don’t come from some political consultant. …They come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff.” Friedman says the Harris-Walz campaign is emphasizing those shirts to make the case that Walz “is an authentic, middle class man”—a dad in plaid; a regular guy whose fashion choices are meant to show voters that he’s relatable; a no-drama, small-town everyman, father figure and former high school football coach — in other words, the opposite of Donald Trump.
Repeated references to his flannel shirts, khaki pants, Land’s End loafers and recent campaign appearances [most made without wearing a tie] are all meant “to dress him down, to help convince voters the Democratic Party is not all coastal elites” and that “the proof of this is in the pudding,” Friedman says. Walz is an “generous optimist,” his campaign aides say—someone who, just by looking at him, you’d know you could trust to help you jump-start the battery of your car or help shovel you out of a snow storm.
Bearded Bro
Okay, so what do fashion editors say about J.D. Vance? “He’s different,” says Rachel Tashjian, a fashion writer for The Washington Post. She cites J.D. Vance’s beard. “Facial hair deviates from the norm.” It’s been 75 years since a presidential or vice presidential candidate for the White House sported a beard, and today, even in Congress, those with beards remain few and far between. But Tashjian says Vance made “a very specific choice” to get a tighter-cropped version of the beard he’s worn in the Senate, to polish it up for the presidential campaign. “I think the Vance beard is a kind of Clint Eastwood type of beard, like the he-man, pioneer, gun-slinger kind of beard that is, for the MAGA world, a beard that has a lot of significance and appeal,” Tashjian said in an interview.
When Vance was promoting his 2016 book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, he was without a beard. When chosen by Donald Trump to be his running mate—before Joe Biden stepped out of the race—he was discouraged from shaving it off, because close-cropped beards are now especially popular among younger men and the Trump team wanted to add some youth appeal to the ticket. [Among men aged 18-39, 69% have some form of facial hair, with 42% having a beard and mustache, says YouGov.]
The beard also sends other messages. Christopher Oldstone-Moore, an Ohio historian and author of Of Beards and Men: The Revealing History of Facial Hair, told GQ writer Alex Nino Gheciu that a beard “is countercultural. It’s a protest. It says ‘I’m not part of the system. I’m against the elites. I’m my own man.’ That’s what the left wanted to say back in the 60s, and now that’s what the right wants to say.”
As for Donald Trump, his off-key fashion choices haven’t changed much at all during his adult life. Since he occupied the White House, they’re still a bit off-key, which some say is the whole point. “He’s consistent. What you see, you’ve always seen, and it’s always going to be what you get,” says The Guardian’s Zoe Williams—dissonance.
Trump’s oversized shoulder pads, sometimes ill-fitting Navy blue suits made by the upscale Italian label Brioni and overly long red ties, (which Trump has said are made in China, and are secured on the short side with Scotch tape), “are just plain odd,” Williams says. Some say Trump chooses these extra-longs to help diminish the appearance of his extra pounds—though intentionally or not, his reputation as a non-conformist synchs with how most people think he’s “one of a kind.” Williams says that Trump’s golf attire—the MAGA hats, wide-legged trousers and well-worn sports shirts— give him a rumpled, sports-casual look that make him seem, to some, more approachable.
Kamala’s Couture
By far, however, it is Kamala Harris’s set of fashion choices that are generating the most consistent buzz and scrutiny. A lot of what Harris wears, fashion editors say, is ruled by a desire to blend v. mix. She is intentionally dressing conservatively, consistently, wearing high-end, Chloe pant suits, mostly in dark colors and frequently paired with white silk, “pussybow” blouses, so as not to “rock the boat” visually—and to keep people focused more on what she says rather than on what she’s wearing. [One exception was when Harris wore, at the Democratic Convention, a pants suit by Chloe in the color, “coconut brown”—a direct reference to the name of the same fruit Harris used in an anecdote she shared in a 2023 speech, and which has since gone viral as a meme referencing one of her more famous speech moments.]
“Her bow blouses and pantsuits are a kind of a holdout from the 1960s, 70s and 80s,” says the Post’s Tashjian, “like what working women wore, and many still do. It says ‘I’m a professional. I’m powerful, but I’m still feminine enough for you to be comfortable with me.’”
Harris also wears pearls, a symbol of her Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA) sorority, a nod that a lot of Black women would catch and others might miss. [AKA is one of the nation’s storied Black sororities, counting such luminaries as novelist Toni Morrison, actress Phylicia Rashad and poet Maya Angelou among its members.] Harris wore a necklace of pearls in 2020, when she accepted the Democratic vice presidential nomination, and she wore pearl earrings in August, when she accepted the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination— each time commending “the family you’re born into and the family you choose.”
Harris is breaking the mold in so many ways, fashion editors say: she’s both a woman and a woman of color. Dressing without taking too many risks “is probably a very smart strategy,” Friedman says. “I think for voters for whom her candidacy is a scary idea, it’s important to look familiar, and to look like the model of something people know.”
Political fashion worn by leading women has had an informal playbook. The late Queen Elizabeth and former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni; U.S. Supreme Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg; former Georgia House Minority Leader and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams; former German Chancellor Angela Merkel—and even former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—all chose to dress conservatively and consistently, style-wise, to underscore their authority. In this way, Friedman says, “Kamala has almost made herself into an emoji.” Repetitive appearance is essential. “She’s not fore-grounding identity politics in her conversations, in her speeches, nor in her interview answers, and she’s not fore-grounding it in her clothing.”
And she’s not wearing white. Hillary Clinton often wore white, the color representing women’s suffrage, and spoke frequently about how it was time to elect a woman to the White House. But Harris has purposefully made no “glass ceiling” speeches, intentionally down-playing her gender to play up Trump’s track record as “a dangerous outlier.” Efforts by Trump to tell voters that Harris lacks experience have, so far, backfired. Harris has been a “first”— gender-wise— in all of her previous government jobs thus far. “Women in power have to be strategic,” says Tina Brown, a former editor of The New Yorker and podcast editor of TBD with Tina Brown.
Fashion editors agree that wearing white, for a female politician, has become a kind of political fashion cliche which, in this heavily divided election year, isn’t needed. Harris is making it clear—by what she’s decided not to wear—that it’s time to turn the corner, shut that door and create a new chapter.
What do you see power wearing this election year? Share your observations with us here!