As sets out this week to earn the , armed with major endorsements right out of the gate, she should take a moment to reconsider the role of on the campaign trail. Despite a few fashion hits for notable occasions — including the purple Christopher John Rogers dress she wore at the 2020 inauguration — Harris’s current day-to-day image as number 2 on the nuclear football list has been crafted carefully to fade into the background. She plays it safe with neutral pantsuits: navy, black, grey, camel, the occasional powder blue or pop of suffragette white.
Accessible, professional and deliberately forgettable, it’s a look she has honed since her prosecutor days. It is a truism that women in politics can’t win, fashionwise: they can’t be too sexy, or too dowdy, or too frivolous, or too much of a spendthrift. (In 2008, Sarah Palin was lambasted for on her campaign wardrobe.
) First Ladies have more sartorial freedom: cast as more ornamental figures, they have latitude to be more feminine, or, in the case of Jackie Kennedy and Melania Trump, to embrace high fashion as a point of national pride. Harris has a more complicated path to walk. But it’s a history-making one: she’s poised to be the second-ever female candidate for U.
S. president — and the first Black and South Asian woman to make this run for the roses. This unprecedented moment is the perfect time for Harris to step up her fashion game — to choose bolder colours, to support emerging BIPOC designers, to add some edge — all of which will help her step out of the background, and into the spotlight.
Kamala Harris, second from left, at the 2020 inauguration, wearing a dress and coat by Black designer Christopher John Rogers. Other political women have paved a path. Nancy Pelosi mixed power dressing — that orange Max Mara coat she wore to go into battle with Trump, those lilac Manolo Blahniks paired with a lilac suit, her signature designer scarves — with real power.
Think of how effectively Republican women on the Milwaukee Convention stage last week , including red, white and blue form-fitting outfits — especially red, that most attention-grabbing of colours. They sent an flag-coded message to their base without saying a word. In her role, Harris is, of course, more concerned with what she’s actually saying than what her clothes are saying.
The most effective meme from the last election cycle occurred during her debate with Mike Pence, when Harris simply said, “I’m speaking.” That assertion resonated with women everywhere who were sick of being talked over by men. Harris, in fact, uses fashion like a man — or, like Angela Merkel, the former German Chancellor who famously erased fashion from the conversation by wearing the same dowdy cut of jacket and pants every day.
The sameness arrested all clothing conversation, even when Merkel wore bright colours. Donald Trump, a master of political theatre, never alters his look: a baggy Brioni navy suit and tie. He has embraced sartorial caricature; he knows it is soothing.
That consistency has worked thus far for Harris as VP. Her go-to label is Joseph Altuzarra, the Paris-born, American-based designer. Harris is said to have 20 to 30 Altuzarra suits, including one she wore in a photo released on social media on Saturday, one day ahead of Biden’s resignation announcement.
On Monday, with buzz about her candidacy at full-throttle, Harris wore a simple black pantsuit paired with a white silk crossover blouse. Kamala Harris in 2020 wearing “suffragette white.” That consistency may not do her any favours as the election grinds on.
The clamour is for change, and that may include the look of the leader of the Democratic hopefuls. Harris’s suits are fine, but they could easily be chicer with the help of a stylist and a good tailor. The arms could be nipped in, the jackets a little less long, the pants cut with a subtle flare.
When she has put the effort in, Harris has shone. Think of the Pyer Ross camel coat she wore in 2021, which was designed by Haitian-American Kerby Jean-Raymond, or the burgundy Christian Siriano suit she wore to the 2023 State of the Union. Last May, Harris wore a deep green caped column dress to a state dinner for the Kenyan president, which was designed by Chemena Kamali, the creative director of Chloé.
These are thoughtful choices that show that Harris can have fun with fashion. Harris has two signature accessories, which give us a peek into her personality. First the pearls, which she really shouldn’t drop.
They give her a rich backstory, and connection to her past. She picked up the pearl habit at Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first historically Black Greek sorority at Howard University, and she’s worn them professionally since her graduation in 1986. The second is her love of Converse sneakers.
This gives Harris a youthful image boost, and a teensy sense of quirk and practicality. “I just love them,” she told talk show hosts Desus & Mero after the 2020 election. “It’s either Chucks or heels, always has been.
” There was some outcry when Harris was shown wearing Converse paired with a dowdy brown suit on the February 2021 cover of Vogue. The image was selected by Anna Wintour herself, but it was widely seen as both pedestrian and pandering. Kamala Harris wearing Converse on her controversial 2021 Vogue cover.
Harris is an experienced politician, who has criss-crossed the country since the 2024 cycle began, promising to restore women’s reproductive rights, a fiery election issue. On the campaign trail, she will undoubtedly face open misogyny and racism. She will have to be twice as careful not to make the same mistakes as her competitors.
But political theatre needs a touch of glamour to capture attention. Fashion can do that. We saw how the simple act of mimicking Trump’s ear bandage unified the crowd at the Republican National Convention.
We saw how Joe Biden’s aviator sunglasses conveyed an air of cool across generations. Harris will need to go beyond Converse, pearls and Altuzarra pantsuits to find a way to connect with the diverse bunch of voters she will need to coalesce around her to pull off a win both at the party level and at the national level. No one does image-making and personal branding better than Americans.
Prepare to see a bold new Harris emerge..
