Clothes as Symbols: Of Consensus, Of Aspiration, Of Identity

The current controversy over Senate Majority Leader Schumer’s decision to scrap the Senate dress code has got me reflecting on fashion, dress codes and their connection not just to politics, but to a sense of personal identity. As Rhonda Garelick writes in What We Lose When We Loosen Dress Codes in the New York Times, “how we dress telegraphs intricate messages to those around us, as well as to ourselves.”  Like so many other people’s, my own wardrobe has undergone a shift since the pandemic and, more importantly, since my husband’s death two and a half years ago. I’ve had to rethink who I am, where I fit in the world, what my goals are. So, what messages am I sending, to myself and to others, as I reshape my wardrobe to fit the new me?

In “the before times,” I was that woman in a hurry, striding purposefully to the gym or on errands, feet clad in running shoes, wearing one of a dozen or so yoga pants I owned with a tee shirt covered by a sweat shirt or a puffer coat, depending on the weather. On date night with my husband I would be “all dressed up,” as he would have remarked with a smile. Yin and yang, leisurewear or luxe. It’s been three and a half years since that me existed. 

Once lockdown hit New York, I acquired yoga and workout apps, a full complement of dumbbells, a pull up bar and additional equipment in order to stay fit without leaving my apartment. Later, full-time caregiving and the continuing threat of COVID kept me away from the gym. By the time of Dan’s demise and my third COVID shot, I was used to my at-home routine, working out daily in the same few ratty tank tops and yoga pants, changing out of them as soon as my session was over. I didn’t go back to my expensive gym membership and personal trainer, deciding instead to spend my money on writing workshops and travel. 

I also wanted to feel whole again, to carry my grief with grace. Without quite realizing what I was doing, I began upgrading my everyday outfits from leisurewear to something closer to how I wanted to feel when faced with both the scariness of putting myself out there as a writer and my resentment at the invisibility that widowhood was conferring on me. As Sarah Seung-McFarland, a psychologist quoted in this Essence Magazine article said, “a curated outfit can support healing and an improved mood. Clothing can also affect how we think when we wear pieces that have symbolic meaning to us. This is known as ‘enclothed cognition’.” 

What should the dress code be for a seventy-something, widowed, introverted but wanting to connect, needing to be taken seriously, wannabe writer living in New York City? It sure wasn’t going to be “business casual,” a standard that was created by men for men. I remember attending a long weekend at a Maryland resort as a White House Fellowship finalist back in the early 90s when this was stated as the dress code. What, exactly, did that mean for me and the one other woman there? Khakis and a polo? When half the men were shooting hoops and bonding, what was I supposed to be doing, or wearing? A cheerleading costume? 

YouTube videos, TikToks and Instagram reels suggest that in order to curate a wardrobe, one should define three or four descriptors against which outfits and potential purchases can be measured. Was I inspired by my “color analysis,” suggested “looks” for my body type, seasonal “trend reports” or, sparked by the fashion in the hit HBO series Succession, “quiet luxury?” After a few hours trying to think of my three words or phrases, all I could come up with was “I know what I like when I see it.”

What I have finally discovered about my own personal style is this: I tend to go for quality over quantity, wearabiity over a “wow factor,” neutral colors rather than lots of brights or pastels, logo-less clothes and accesories. I like a good pair of jeans or trousers, a crew neck shirt or long sleeved white or black tee, a button up shirt, merino wool sweaters, flat shoes and booties, blazers, leather jackets, beautiful scarves, a few favorite brands and the best outerwear I can afford, because I walk everywhere and live in New York. 

When I travel to Europe I feel much more at home, because European women have a much more classic style, wearing less makeup with simpler, more elegant clothes made from high quality materials. Older women are taken seriously there, respected and considered attractive. They dress well even to walk their dogs or grab a coffee. While I’m not trying for the recent “dress like a French girl” fad, I guess I really do dress like a mature French woman, leaving my leisurewear for exercising at home. 

Which brings me back to the Senate. The brouhaha over a dress code has morphed from a feminist issue a few years ago, allowing women to wear something other than the female version of a business suit (and in some ways made a mockery by Kyrsten Sinema’s sartorial excess) to a condemnation of Pennsylvania John Fetterman and his hoodies and shorts. Partisans decry Fetterman’s casual outfits as “a terrible choice,” “disgraceful.” Rhonda Garelick ends her NYT piece with a more nuanced critique: “A sea of 100 adults all dressed in some kind of instantly recognizable, respectful manner – a suit and tie, a skirt and jacket – creates a unified visual entity. A group in which individuals have agreed to subsume their differences into an overarching, sartorial whole.” She suggests that a dress code would “remind senators and everyone around them (including the general public) of the still-noble goal of consensus.”

The personal as political as we used to say in the 60s.

But what if John Fetterman’s sartorial choices come from a deeper place? As a man who suffered first a severe stroke in the middle of his campaign and then a clinical depression in his first year in office, perhaps he too needed to heal, to wear the clothing that had defined him before his illnesses, ditching business attire for his trademark casual wear. As Shakaila Forbes-Bell, a fashion psychologist quoted in the Essence article linked above said, “Dressing how you want to feel gives you the power to shift your mood and potentially take you out of negative states…One thing you can control, to a large degree, is the way you show up in the world, including your styling choices.” 

John Fetterman is choosing to show up as Everyman; whether you approve of his outfits or not, it is hard not to agree that while consensus is good, consensus built on elitism rather than inclusion is not. As a woman, I wouldn’t be taken seriously if I showed up wearing what he does. But then again, I wasn’t always taken seriously in business casual, or formal business attire either. In retirement I didn’t have to think much about what I wore, happily married to a man who thought I was beautiful even when I looked like a slob, not needing to impress anyone else. Then, in widowhood, I felt like I became invisible. Like Fetterman, I decided to dress not just to please myself, but to boost my confidence, to present myself as I wished to be seen, to recapture a sense of who I was.  While our wardrobe choices are clearly not the same, I have a feeling Fetterman and I have a lot more in common than meets the eye.