Dress for the job you want, the adage goes, but does Kamala Harris dress like a president? In one sense, yes, because they’ve all favoured suits, and so does Harris. But also, no, because there isn’t a precedent for what a female president of the US wears. Politics and popular culture have created expectations of how female leaders dress.
On the world stage we’ve had Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel and Ursula von der Leyen, and we’ve watched TV politicians such as Veep’s Selina Meyer, House of Cards’ Claire Underwood and even an episode of The Simpsons in 2000 with Lisa Simpson as the first female president in a mauve suit and pearls that uncannily presages Harris’s outfit for the 2021 inauguration. And then there’s power-adjacent first ladies, from Nancy Reagan to Michelle Obama. But Harris will still have to carve her own path.
Like Hillary Clinton, who was also up against Donald Trump in a close race for the presidency in 2016, she has created a formula. Clinton has said she opted for trouser suits because “a uniform was also an anti-distraction technique: since there wasn’t much to say or report on what I wore, maybe people would focus on what I was saying instead” — although eventually her pantsuits in rainbow colours became such a repetitive trope that she would joke about it, calling herself a “pantsuit aficionado” in her Twitter bio. Harris is probably using a similarly pragmatic trick.
The VP has forged a signature modern power-dressing l.