How We Dress for Power—And for Each Other
On fashion as communication, cultural code-switching, and a new podcast interview!
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A couple of weeks ago, I spent a day in Las Vegas en route to Southern Utah for a hiking vacation. As I got into a taxi back to our cheaper hotel after breakfast at a fancier one, the driver said, “I thought you were Mormon until you opened your mouth. You look like you’re dressed for Easter.”
I thought it was hilarious - partly because I’m a lifelong atheist, so very much not a Mormon dressed for Easter. But also because I understood how he might have come to that conclusion. We were in the state next door to Utah, after all.
More to the point, it hadn’t even crossed my mind when I got dressed that morning, but I could see it: the pink Farm Rio dress, chunky flats, and oversized sunhat that read as “stylish Brooklyn mom” to me could easily register as “Evie magazine” in a different context.
I filed the story away to share here, knowing my podcast interview with Gabrielle Arruda would soon be released - and that these nuances, of fashion and what it communicates, were exactly what we’d been talking about.
Click here to listen to the podcast.
Gabrielle is a stylist and fashion content creator I first connected with when I interviewed her for a Vogue piece in February on David Kibbe and the resurgence of body type theory. We hit it off, and she invited me onto her podcast to talk about how my work as a journalist - fashion-adjacent, if not always fashion-forward - had shaped the way I think about style.
I’ll admit I felt a little imposter-y about the whole thing, and told her as much. I don’t consider myself a “fashion journalist,” per se. My beat is gender and culture. I’m less of a fashion industry insider than I am an enthusiastic observer. But it’s also true that fashion has been a quiet subthread throughout my career. One of my first assignments as a freelance writer - twenty years ago now - was covering Sydney Fashion Week. I’ve interviewed Alexa Chung and Kate Moss. And for years, on and off, my Tumblr explored the fashion industry’s broken promise - that with the right clothes, we could transcend our ordinary selves and become someone new.
In the podcast, which was released today, Gabrielle and I talk about fashion as language: a symbolic system that helps us tell the world who we are and who we want to be. We talk about how style communicates belonging, aspiration, self-awareness. How what we wear can offer a kind of shorthand - a window into how we see ourselves, or hope others will.
For women especially, style can be a means by which we telegraph power. I think of a “women’s empowerment” conference I attended in New York a decade ago, where everyone changed into heels in the lobby - because in the 2010s, a “powerful woman” wouldn’t be caught dead in flats. (Though now, of course, I think: maybe a truly powerful woman wouldn’t need heels to telegraph her power at all.) Or the way the Netflix series Inventing Anna uses Anna Delvey’s wardrobe to trace her climb through New York’s social stratosphere - from Euro party girl in flowy dresses, to brocade blazers and oversized earrings, to minimalist black and rimless glasses as she courts the investment world.
But as Gabrielle and I discuss, getting the codes right is trickier than it looks. One of the things I find most interesting about fashion is how - even when we’re using it to craft a story about ourselves - we almost always give something away. I think of Kristen Wiig’s character in Palm Royale, who borrows a Gucci handbag from her husband’s aunt to fit in with the wealthy women of the social club she wants to join, but is easily identified as an outsider because the bag is from the “wrong” season. Or the “capacious handbag” scene in Succession.
But sometimes, style can telegraph a different type of power.
When I went to the Women Deliver conference in Kigali in 2023, I remember being struck by the sheer beauty and creativity of how the women at the conference were dressed: in vibrant patterns, bold colors, and fabrics rooted in each person’s place and culture.
It made me reflect on the story we’ve been told about what it means to look “professional” - a story rooted in maleness, whiteness, colonial ideals. But here, in a space that was both woman-dominated and thoroughly international - with participants from every continent except Antarctica - that story didn’t hold. Instead, we rewrote it together. Not with blazers and beige, but with beauty, assertion, and joy.
We didn’t need to erase ourselves to be taken seriously. We could bring our full aesthetic selves into the room - and still hold power.
It reminded me that fashion, at its best, is not just self-expression. It’s a way of claiming space. A way of saying, to those who are paying attention: This is what I find beautiful. This is what I value. This is how I see the world - and how I want the world to see me.
When I think about what I love most about other people’s clothes, it’s the small, unexpected details - a woman with a blue tint in her hair, glasses in an odd-but-perfect shape, a skirt with layered pleats, a print that makes you pause. Bold earrings, a scarf tied just so, a necklace that finishes the outfit like punctuation.
I love the creativity behind it - the sense that someone took a moment to delight themselves, and maybe someone else who might notice.
That’s why I get dressed, too. Not just to express myself, but to offer a visual hello. To leave a breadcrumb trail. Often the greatest pleasure is in the overlap - when what I love catches someone else’s eye, and they smile, because they love it too.
Style can be a form of connection, a visual commonality. A quiet way of saying, I think you might get this.
Until next time,
Rachel
David: I understand completely if this is taken as a stand-alone comment. But we were discussing the refusal of some to acknowledge that we are all connected. I try my best to be inclusive of everyone. My goal is to help each person BOTH shine individually and also help uplift the world. Thank you for your interest and lovely thoughts. I truly appreciate them!
"When I think about what I love most about other people’s clothes, it’s the small, unexpected details - a woman with a blue tint in her hair, glasses in an odd-but-perfect shape, a skirt with layered pleats, a print that makes you pause. Bold earrings, a scarf tied just so, a necklace that finishes the outfit like punctuation"
Yes, yes, yes. These are the things that pull me in too. And I shop for things like this, because they're usually the things that I find have an eternal appeal.