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closeFormer Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently unveiled her collection of fashion pins, and they're on display at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City.
The pins, she said, helped her to communicate messages to those she met as secretary of state. Perhaps most famously, when meeting with then president of Iraq Saddam Hussein, Secretary Albright wore a snake pin to subtly counter an Iraqi poem that described her as a serpent. She has continued to wear the pins — mostly costume pieces — and notes that they are a fun way to signal a mood for an event.
Because what a public woman looks like — most often her hairdos and hemlines — is written about, unfortunately to the negligence of other more important information about her, it seems particularly wise and strategic that if you can’t beat the media you should join them by embedding a message in your style.
Hearing about the display of Albright’s pins and her recently released book “Read My Pins,” I started to think about other public women who have communicated — perhaps quite intentionally — important messages with their style.
The late Margaret Chase Smith, Republican senator from Maine, always wore a fresh rose. When I visited her library and museum in Skowhegan, Maine, I saw the specially designed minuscule water holder that was rigged up to keep the flower fresh. A nondescript, usually dark colored business suit or dress allowed her to fit in to the “Ultimate Men’s Club,” but her addition of the trademark rose “allowed her to remain ladylike,” said Angie Stockwell, Smith’s longtime personal secretary and now the collection specialist.
As a senator, presidential candidate and now as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton consistently wears pantsuits. She wore skirted suits as first lady, but perhaps as a sign of her new liberation out of her husband’s White House and her ability, for the first time in a long time, to speak on her own behalf, she wears pantsuits. The emergence of the pantsuit into mainstream fashion for women in the 1970s coincided with the rise of the women’s liberation movement.
Clinton even speaks about her pantsuits. After she won a New York Senate seat, she recounted, in her victory speech, “Sixty-two counties, 16 months, three debates, two opponents and six black pantsuits later, because of you, we are here!”
And in her Democratic National Convention speech in 2008, resplendent in a bright orange pantsuit, she urged her supporters to “unite as a single party with a single purpose.” She appealed to the “sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits” — a nod to the young-adult book series and movie “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” — to embrace Barack Obama as their candidate.
First lady Michelle Obama unapologetically continues to bare her arms, recently on the cover of Prevention magazine, perhaps in an effort to remind women to be strong, to take care of themselves and to signal that she isn’t likely to cover up just because some people think she should. Opinion columnists and pundits have called on her to cover her arms. And bloggers have dubbed the interest in her toned arms “Armsgate.”
In Prevention magazine, the first lady describes her exercise and fitness routine and encourages women to continue to take care of themselves as they age. Also a style signal from our first lady, this one reminiscent of Pat Nixon’s “respectable Republican cloth coat,” Obama frequently dresses in affordable J. Crew clothing, communicating, perhaps, that in lean economic times, we all need to find places to save money.
The personal style of our public women has always been a fascination to the press and the public and some astute public women seem to be putting their messages where they’ll get the most attention. They are wearing them.
Nichola D. Gutgold is associate professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State Lehigh Valley and author of several books on women’s communication style. Her most recent book is “Almost Madam President: Why Hillary Clinton ‘won’ in 2008.”
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