Kamala Devi Harris, Vice-President elect of the United States, is mostly seen in suits of dark monochromes: navy, grey, black, maroon pantsuits, with a pearl string around her neck and her feet in sneakers. But she dazzled on Saturday night delivering her victory speech, resplendent in a white pantsuit.
Since then, the said pantsuit, created by American fashion designer Wes Gordon for Carolina Herrera, has been trending. The New York Times has even said that “This wasn’t about fashion, it was about politics, past and future”.
But why should fashion be wished away when it is being used so sharply on such an occasion? Fashion embodies politics, past and future. In fact, what one wears is politics, in some way or the other, from Gandhi to the Insta fashion influencer.
Harris, the first woman to be elected American Vice-President, the first woman of colour to be elected American Vice-President, the first woman of Asian origin to be elected American Vice-President, knows that and has chosen her clothes carefully. Let us take a look at her campaign and what followed.
- The pantsuit is the working woman’s attire in her part of the world. During her campaign, she wore her dark suits, or jeans and shirt, or a blazer-jeans-converse combo as she moved along coasts, or climbed down from a chopper. A bit on monochromes here. They have been the shade of male power for long, worn by men who run the country to those who run tech empires. Women who wear pants often wear them in solid colours, but may feel obliged to relieve the monochrome with a bit of colour and design. Harris does not. She is comfortable wearing navy on navy, or black on grey: serious colours, no distraction, no concession to gender roles.
- And then she started getting the calls on that day and when Joe Biden called, she was seen in a Nike sweatshirt, with her hair pulled back untidily, shouting, “we did it, Joe, you are going to be the next President of United States”. Still monochrome.
- Finally, the white suit. A version of the Knight in Shining Armour for the US perhaps. She was referencing a long history of women’s empowerment with the suit, going back to “suffragette white”. Suffragettes wore white, head to toe, making the colour the symbol of their movement instead of dressing radically. They did not want to be criticised for appearing too “masculine”, as that would distract attention from their cause. Well, that has changed.
Harris was also alluding to the white suits of Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman US Vice-Presidential nominee, and of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump’s challenger in the 2016 elections.
Harris’s pussy-bow blouse was a direct tribute to Margaret Thatcher’s power-dressing.
All this went well with the way Harris’s shoulder length brown hair tousled up and blew across her face.
Asked if there was a room for some loosened dress code in the Biden-Harris White House, she reportedly said: “I think, there is.”
Everything Trump would hate.