Undressed Episode One: Pantsuit Aficionado

By Sydney Stein, Smera Kumar and Emily Kvitko

In her twitter bio, former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton proudly declares herself a “pantsuit aficionado,” and if you have ever seen a photograph of the woman, you’d be hardpressed to disagree. Throughout the election, comedians and fans alike took note of Clinton’s pantsuits, but that was the extent of it.

It seems strange, but of all the ways for Clinton to leverage her self-proclaimed pantsuit professionalism, she never once incorporated the pantsuit as a part of her brand. After Clinton’s loss, the media immediately started looking into why she failed to win after the polls had all but pinky promised that she would be our next president.

Many have focused  on the fact that people didn’t find Clinton personable or engaging. Women did not see themselves in Clinton. Millennials found her unrelatable. She was standoffish, unapproachable and didn’t seem to represent the people.

At the same time, Clinton faced unrelenting waves of sexism during her campaign. It is hard to imagine that her serious demeanor would have been equally scrutinized if she were a man. She probably would have felt less pressure to withhold her personal life from the public eye, and perhaps she would have shared more about her personal identity. Had she been a man, we arguably would never have cared about her pantsuits at all.

But we did. We did because fashion and womanhood have always been intertwined. We did because she is one of the few older female public figure we have to look to for fashion. We did because she called our attention to it with her twitter bio. We did because it was a national headline when her and Elizabeth Warren wore the same color pantsuit.

Rather than using the pantsuit celebrating her identity as a ‘pantsuit aficionado’ Hillary used it as a way to hide her femininity and give herself a more ‘masculine’ look so that she could fit in better in the realm of politics. Although she drew attention to the pantsuit, she never let us in on how the pantsuit was involved in her identity. In essence she wore the pantsuit, but she didn’t WEAR it.

We invite you to listen to our first episode of Undressed, the STITCH podcast dedicated to bringing you information on all things fashion forward. In our “pilot” episode, we are hoping to explore some of these questions, and talk about why we think Hillary should have made more of an effort to leverage the pantsuit as part of her campaign identity. Listen below!