A few months before Gloria Steinem, the pioneering feminist and writer, died, she did something most nonagenarians do not do: She posed for a photo shoot for a fashion brand.
The images, taken by Paola Kudacki, were for a new virtual fashion marketplace called Weldun, which aims to serve women with changing physical needs, whether because of injury, illness, disability, pregnancy or menopause. After Steinem’s death, questions arose as to whether the photos should be released at all, but they are now about to be seen for the first time.
That makes the photos not just her last formal portraits, but effectively her last salvo on a subject she championed throughout her life: women and age, and all the social prejudices and misperceptions that entails.
Essentially, they are a statement for posterity about what 92 looks like.
“We never imagined the images would take on the significance they have today,” said Carly Berlin, the 38-year-old founder of Weldun. A former artist and interior designer, she began thinking about the gap between fashion and women’s changing bodies after undergoing a preventive double mastectomy.
“We were photographing a woman who spent her life challenging how the world sees women, and who was still very much interested in what came next,” Berlin said. But, she added, Steinem’s death meant that “our responsibility to the photographs changed.”
In the end, Berlin said, they decided to move forward — and with the images they and Steinem had originally selected, rather than a posthumous edit. “These photographs aren’t intended as a farewell,” Berlin said. “We’re not looking at a woman trying to remain relevant. We’re looking at a woman who never stopped being relevant.”
Taken in Steinem’s home, the images show her alternately sitting in a chair and on her sofa (the one where she guided her talking circles) wearing a thin black sweater from Kallmeyer, her trademark cuffs and aviator glasses with a black jacket by Another Tomorrow tossed over her shoulders. Sometimes she is in a white button-up, leaning on a cane. Often, she is laughing.
“She got requests to be photographed constantly, offers to do brand-affiliated things, and often wasn’t inclined to indulge,” said Amy Richards, who worked with Steinem for 35 years, sits on the board of her foundation, and was privy to her conversations around the Weldun shoot.
Steinem was wary of being judged because of how she looked and, Richards noted, had been criticized for appearing in a 1998 Coach campaign, even though the brand made a meaningful donation to the Ms. Foundation for Women in return. What made the difference with Weldun, Richards said, was that Steinem liked the idea that she could represent a life stage that was largely underrepresented — and almost entirely uncelebrated.
Steinem had met Berlin when the entrepreneur attended one of her talking circles, and she was attracted to the fact that Weldun aimed to facilitate women’s autonomy at every point in their lives. One of the often overlooked consequences of bodily change, whether it’s a broken bone or pregnancy or arthritis or the result of chemotherapy, is that it can render clothes that were once signposts of personality impossible to get into, button up or tolerate — which can lead to the feeling that one’s identity has been erased.
Weldun, which went live last month, tries to address those issues not by categorizing them according to any specific disabilities, but by identifying clothing from existing brands like Kallmeyer, Rag & Bone and Another Tomorrow that comes with built-in accommodations. To do so, a curation committee of experts with different physical needs advises on all of the products being sold.
These might include pants that fit over a surgical boot, fabric that caters to those with hypersensitivity, elastic waists that can expand or shrink to a range of sizes and shirts with magnetic buttons. The point, Berlin said, is that you should not have to sacrifice your sense of self because fashion didn’t take an atypical physical condition (or even a typical, but temporary, one) into consideration.
For a long time after her mastectomy, Berlin said, she could not raise her arms above her shoulders. That made her realize “we were accustomed to our bodies doing what they needed to do for our clothing,” she said, “but really not the other way around.” She wanted to change that relationship.
That idea resonated with Steinem, who always believed her clothes should serve her purposes, Richards said. “She never liked to be dressed or forced into something — clothing, jewelry — that wasn’t natural to her,” she said. “Anything that made her not look like herself.”
Berlin said that when the Weldun crew arrived at Steinem’s home for the shoot, “she was chilling on the bed, eating a yogurt.” Steinem chose the clothes she would wear for the photographs (the pants and cuffs were her own), and she liked the long-sleeve black Kallmeyer sweater she was wearing so much, they gave it to her.
The photographs will now live on the Weldun website, along with a video interview Steinem gave at the same time in which she discussed the role of clothing in her life and the way it relates to how “we all, as women, need to be able to make decisions over our own bodies.” (This is part of a series called Weldun Voices that will also include Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who is living with multiple sclerosis.) The images will be exhibited in mid-November, with a limited run of prints sold to benefit Steinem’s foundation.
When Steinem saw the photographs for the first time, “she was like, ‘Do I have that many wrinkles?’” Richards said. “But she never once said, ‘I want these airbrushed.’” She knew they would be part of a legacy.
Not to mention, they serve as a reminder that “so long as we are living long enough to experience physical change, we will,” Berlin said. “It’s not niche. It’s ultimately the most human experience.”
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