It was the summer of 1984. Republican Ronald Reagan was running for reelection against Democrat Walter Mondale, who had picked a woman, Geraldine Ferraro, for his running mate. I was watching the political conventions on my little pink TV—no cable—in my apartment on East Ninth Street that cost $177 a month, wearing a silky flapper frock bought from a vintage store on St.
Marks Place. Let the rest of the world flounce to the ballot box in neon colors, miniskirts, big-shoulder overcoats, and Jane Fonda workout clothes: I was dressed for the occasion as if it were 1924, not 1984, with prohibition in full swing and Republican Calvin Coolidge winning the White House. (The waggish journalist and cultural critic H.
L. Mencken once observed that electing Coolidge was like a man being presented with a banquet and “stay[ing] his stomach by catching and eating flies.”) If politics notoriously makes strange bedfellows, the same can be said about those of us obsessed with affairs of state but also besotted with fashion.
I am now, and have been for my entire adult life, as excited by a great stump speech as I am by a superb runway show. (In fact, I wish our candidates were selected with the same precision I reserve for choosing my outfits.) It might seem strange, or trivial, to view social history through the lens of fashion, but please consider: The issues that animate us, the causes that rile us up, the music and films that thrill us—they all inform our political views.
Why, th.