Part 1: The limits of fashion and symbolic gestures as political tools

On liberalism, fashion, and aesthetics

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Lmao, a moment I’ll never forget.

It’s been a little over two months since Donald Trump took office, and, as expected, liberals are using performative tactics to fight literal fascism — exactly what writer Ismatu Gwendolyn means when she says, “liberalism is inherently destructive because it may posture, it may give lip service or aesthetic credence to radical, revolutionary ideals, but there is no spine.”  Even as our circumstances grow more dire, liberals continue to choose the mise en scène over material action.

A few weeks ago, Democratic congresswomen staged a protest. They wore pink suits, holding up signs that said “save Medicaid” and “Musk steals” during Trump’s speech to show that they were opposed to his harmful legislation. Afterward, they all posed for a photo op, while Congress member Al Green was escorted out for actually disrupting the speech. 

Then, in November 2024, in response to the election results, white women wore blue friendship bracelets to show that they didn’t vote for Trump, while those who would likely be most impacted by his policies were figuring out a plan for staying safe. 

These gestures immediately brought me back to a story I wrote after the 2016 election, when similar symbolic fashion statements—pink pussyhats and safety pins—were worn in protest. I’m republishing parts of the essay with some updated commentary because it feels eerily ripe for this moment.

Since Donald Trump was elected president two weeks ago, the number of hate crimes has risen to levels not seen in America since 9/11. There have been reported incidents of high schoolers chanting ‘white power’ and swastikas with the phrase ‘Make America White Again’ spray-painted on a building in New York. In response, Americans have started to wear safety pins on their clothing as a gesture of allyship with people of color, immigrants, and members of the LGBTQ community.

“‘It’s just a little signal that shows people facing hate crimes that they’re not alone,’ the UK-based safety pin movement’s founder, Allison, told Indy100 in June. She also told The Guardian that while she thinks people who wear the safety pin are ‘pledging to stand up’ for immigrants and people of color, it has limits. ‘Even if you feel too frightened [by bigotry], you can go to the person afterward and say: “I’m so sorry, is there anything I can do for you?” Even if it’s just making them a cup of tea.’”

While it’s a gesture with good intentions, the safety pin is ultimately a bystander form of activism, entirely on white people’s terms. There are white people telling other white people why it doesn’t work. There are white people arguing that it works. There are white people telling people of color they are wrong for questioning the pin’s intentions. But there isn’t much dialogue where white people ask people in marginalized communities what will actually make them feel safe—or a sign that white liberals are doing anything except showing solidarity because they don’t want to be grouped together with Trump supporters. It’s trendy, it’s easy, and there’s no binding commitment.

Other examples of this type of empty symbolism during Trump’s first term: In 2019, Democratic congresswomen wore white suits to Trump’s State of the Union address to protest and show their commitment to defending the rights of women, yet the Democratic Party spent decades deprioritizing the enshrinement of Roe v. Wade. Then, in 2020, Democratic members of Congress wore African kente-cloth stoles while kneeling in solidarity with Black Lives Matter—a canon event—yet any real push for legislation to “defund the police” was nowhere to be found. 

Nearly nine years since Trump’s first term, and it doesn't seem like we've learned much. We continue to prioritize, and are obsessed with, our comfort. We prefer recognition over sacrifice, optics over organizing, individualism over community. And, aesthetics and fashion help us play that role of appearing to be—posturing. Within those four and a half years, another type of posturing—by way of “personal style”—has become prominent: our obsession with having, or appearing to have, taste. What we’re reading, how we’re designing our homes, where we’re vacationing, what designers we’re wearing, etc. This obsession has led to another troubling trend: using style as a moral barometer. 

There’s no doubt that fashion is important and serves a crucial purpose in the way we communicate, perform our personhood, and capture the historical zeitgeist. But, I'm also aware of its limitations and suspicious of the motives behind pretending it’s more powerful than it is. Fashion and aesthetics can’t be used as shortcuts to actually taking action. Nor can they determine who’s right or wrong, good or evil. It brings to mind the discussions around “republican” versus “democrat” hair and makeup—conservative aesthetics are more garish and parched while liberal aesthetics are more understated and moisturized. A look at Congress and there’s obviously some truth to these differences, but we wouldn’t be confounded by election results if how people appeared was who they actually were, or if we looked at rising trends with more depth. 

The most insidious part of this current moment is the contradictions, manipulations, and what's hiding in plain sight. It forces us to reckon with our own superficiality; how people can project one thing publically and do the complete opposite behind closed doors. Unless we dig deeper, we’ll continue to be bamboozled. This isn’t to tell you who or what to engage with—or not. That’s a personal choice, as we all know too well some awful people have really good style, really beautiful homes, make really good art. But, we have a choice in how we engage, and critical thinking and contextualization are paramount when things are often not what they seem on the surface.

But, when is fashion a powerful statement, politically or otherwise? 

“Fashion is engaging, and it can be a really powerful message,” says Elizabeth Way, a curatorial assistant at the Fashion Institute of Technology museum. “It ties you physically to those political beliefs…It might not be appropriate or it might not be in your nature to speak about things, but you can put that message on your body without having to say a word.”

Throughout history, using fashion as a medium to show solidarity or spread a message has been most useful when the people involved are actively being affected by the stakes at hand—and aggressively fighting for change. Way recalls the 1960s, when black men and women wore afros as a way of forming solidarity without a specific political message. “In advocating for black beauty there’s always political clout,” she says. In the same era, civil right protesters adopted the uniform of agricultural workers and working class blacks in the South, wearing denim overalls to build camaraderie with them. Designer Patrick Kelly later referenced the overalls in many of his designs. Early suffragists wore white with colored ribbons to promote their movement, which included political clubs and lobbying for women to run for office. Young women in the 1960s wore miniskirts as a form of feminist protest against double standards and women’s right to wear whatever they wanted, right on the heels of the sexual liberation movement and the introduction of the birth control pill.

For a fashion statement to be powerful and effective, it has to be tied back to an established ideology or plan of action. 

This is why liberal symbolism feels so desultory; it isn’t grounded in additional ethos or action, nor is it tied to an alternative to what they’re protesting—the statement itself is where it ends. This is also why fashion statements on the runways are so empty as well. For example, you can’t just dress up in edgy ripped clothing and call yourself punk; that’s a costume. To be truly punk, you have to believe in the anarchist, anti-establishment, anti-capitalist, individual liberty ethos.

It also has to be blatant: a symbol of resistance, a defiance of a societal norm. The mere act of wearing invites risk or consequences. 

The keffiyeh, for instance, which became a symbol of Palestinian identity in the 1930s, and later, in the 1960s, a symbol of resistance to Israeli occupation, carries weight when one wears it. Not because Palestinian identity or a desire for free Palestine is inherently radical, but because the keffiyeh is a visual affirmation of the truth that upends Zionist fallacies. And while there have been attempts to obscure the meaning of the keffiyeh — co-opted by hipsters in the early 2000s, on the runways in what fashion writers called “terrorist chic”, and even Carrie Bradshaw— the scarf can never truly be divorced from its original meaning because its roots are firm. 

That’s why it’s powerful. So powerful that Israel supporters feel the need to recast its meaning, claiming it as a symbol of anti-semetism and terrorism to justify their Islamophobia and violence. Amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza, over the last year and a half, there have been a slew of firings and verbal and physical assaults against those wearing the scarf. In November 2023, three Palestinian students—Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid, and Tahseen Ahmed—were shot in what appeared to be a hate crime. Two of them were wearing keffiyehs.

If the keffiyeh unsettles because it affirms a truth that others work to erase, the MAGA hat, a visual emblem of a right-wing ideology, unsettles because of what it endorses. A powerful fashion statement can also evoke both apprehension and allegiance. The MAGA hat is tied to a specific and widely recognized identity, one that longs for a revisionist past and believes America must rid itself of the problems hindering it from being great: DEI, wokeness, immigrants, trans people, women’s bodily autonomy. As Washington Post critic Robin Givhan said, “To wear a MAGA hat is to wrap oneself in a Confederate flag. The look may be more modern and the fit more precise, but it’s just as woeful and ugly.” 

The cherry-red hat with Trump’s campaign slogan is a safety net for those who identify with—or are permissive of—the movement’s ideology; an instant signifier of who you’re aligned with in your hate, your vote, and your speech. It’s a jarring warning to those who the hatred is aimed at; an uneasy feeling of discomfort about how you’ll be treated. The nuances of the wearer don’t matter—you aren’t racist, you’re Black, you’re a woman; the MAGA hat’s meaning can’t be detached from the unhinged actions we’ve witnessed its wearers support: the attack on the Capitol, white supremacists running over protesters, measles outbreaks, book bans, ICE raids, Project 2025. It’s why the attempts to recast its meaning, by wearing the hat as a joke or changing the slogan, don’t land. 

All of this is to say our appearance and what we wear has always mattered, but when we want that to say something politically there has to be more behind it—material action, peril, a solidified identity. Otherwise, you’re just speaking in contradictions. 

Last week, Democrats were back at it again, not in the fashion sense, but still in the realm of appearance and posturing. Democratic congressman Cory Booker spoke about resisting fascism and moral courage on the Senate floor for a record 25-hours. It wasn’t a filibuster, and there wasn’t a plan of action after, but, several days later Booker did vote in favor of sending 8.8 billion dollars worth of arms to support Israel’s genocide. 

NEXT TIME: Part 2: Fashion, Liberalism, and the Media