But What Was She Wearing?
There is a shift, we’re hearing, in corporate America towards encouraging ladies to dress more like… well, “ladies”. Think traditionally feminine – skirts and dresses with high heels, rather than trousers with flats.
Women at work are reporting pointed memos about “appropriate dress” doing the rounds, meaning not more “formal” but essentially the kind of clothes that men don’t wear.
I mention it because cultural shifts on the other side of the world tend to make their way here, so if you start getting a bit of side-eye at the office for your autumnal move to dress pants and brogues, this could account for it.
Pay them no heed. The way women dress has always been policed and critiqued, for immodesty specifically, and also the general suspicion we’re up to no good. So what we choose to wear is often political and frequently a form of a rebellion.
You can find the first green shoots of modern feminism in the Blue Stocking Society of London in the 1750s – a women’s literary discussion group that turned into a social and educational movement.
These women earned their name because, when they got together to talk about big ideas in books, they chose to wear their ordinary blue wool stockings instead of formal black silk stockings. This was their way of making the point their get-together was about what they thought and said, rather than what they wore.
Let us never forget this whole feminism thing was started by what was essentially a Book Club. All kinds of things happen when you let girls learn to read.
Of course, we don’t always hit the mark with sartorial rebellion. Those of us paying any kind of attention to American politics (I can barely take my eyes off it) will have seen Democratic women wearing coordinated pink outfits to Trump’s address to Congress as their protest against policies negatively affecting women and families.
They’re going to need something stronger than looking like they’re off to a screening of “Barbie” to get traction in these slippery times.
It’s not only what we wear that is political, but what we don’t wear. Remember the corset? Sure, some of us might squeeze into one for a bit of burlesque at home or abroad, but it’s no longer a daily punishment.
That’s because feminists like American Elizabeth Stuart Phelps fairly roared this memorable quote in 1873: “Burn up the corsets! ... Make a bonfire of the cruel steels that have lorded it over your thorax and abdomens for so many years and heave a sigh of relief, for your emancipation I assure you from this moment has begun.”
Ms Phelps is an inspiration for my recent move to bras with no underwire – a thing I had not thought possible for the bustier of us, but it seems modern manufacture and old-time physics can make it so. I will henceforth save my uncomfortable bras for best.
This is possibly less of a protest, more an act of selfcare – in these times I like the sense I am comfortable enough to take a nap without getting undressed. But I appreciate the original point – that we really shouldn’t wear things that stop us being able to run and shout. Or even take a deep breath and demand the right to vote.
Meanwhile, stay alert to any push towards stilettos and hobble skirts at your place of work – unless Retro 50s is your aesthetic thing, in which case fill your boots - or more appropriately your kitten heels.