In the end, she did not wear a white suit.
For the biggest, most consequential speech of her life, for the headline appearance in four days of high pageantry, Kamala Harris accepted her nomination as the Democratic candidate for president in navy blue. That’s a bigger symbolic statement than it may at first appear.
Many women in the United Center in Chicago wore white. Many of the other speakers had worn it, too. (A call had gone out from the D.N.C. Women’s Caucus requesting the shade.) Ashley Biden, for her speech introducing her father; Stephanie Grisham, for her speech explaining why she had abandoned Donald Trump, her former employer; Deb Haaland, the secretary of the interior; Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. But not Ms. Harris.
Instead, she used the regalia of the moment to bring to a close a chapter that began with the nomination of the first Democratic woman candidate for president, Hillary Clinton, in 2016, and to start a new one.
That’s what she offered in her speech — “a chance to chart a new way forward” — and that’s what her suit represented. In its monochrome substance, the point was impossible to miss.
Ever since Mrs. Clinton strode onstage at her convention in her white Ralph Lauren, assuming the mantle of all the women who had fought for a political voice, from the suffragists to Geraldine Ferraro, the white pantsuit has become a very specific political trope, one that was especially potent during the Trump administration.
During the 2016 election, it was a costume of solidarity. It was a silent statement of protest by congresswomen at the State of the Union in multiple years; armor worn during the Jan. 6 committee hearings and by numerous news anchors. It became such a default sartorial metaphor — when in doubt, women wear white! — it started to seem trite.
Ms. Harris made a different choice. One that didn’t center her femininity — or feminism (that’s a given) — but rather her ability to do the job. One less about the historic nature of her nomination in both gender and race, or even about meeting Mr. Trump on the performative reality TV battlefield that he enjoys, but about getting down to the business of the future.
To be specific, she chose a navy blue pantsuit — the color of the commander in chief — with sharp shoulders and peaked lapels paired with a matching navy pussy-bow blouse. The suit was from Chloé, the French label designed by Chemena Kamali, which also made the tan suit that caused such a ruckus when Ms. Harris wore it for her surprise appearance on Day 1 of the convention.
Indeed, the two silhouettes were practically identical, the tan suit (or caramel or just brown, depending on how much subtext you wanted to read into it) functioning as a kind of curtain raiser for the navy one. Together, the two suggested that she already had her governing uniform down pat. Especially because both were “bespoke,” according to Chloé, meaning they were made specifically for Ms. Harris, presumably to her specifications.
(As Barack Obama once told the writer Michael Lewis, the president has to make so many decisions every day that being able to reduce any one of them is a boon, so knowing exactly what you’re going to put on in the morning is a job strategy.)
The suit looked professional. It looked polished. It wasn’t particularly radical. It wasn’t nearly as edgy as the navy Monse suit Michelle Obama wore for her speech on Tuesday. For anyone uncomfortable with the pioneering nature of Ms. Harris’s candidacy, it suggested continuity.
The most notable thing about it, aside from its deviation from the recent color rule, was that it came from a French, rather than American, fashion house — albeit one run by a woman in a long chain of women — and that the sleeves were a little too long, so they bunched up around her arms as she spoke. Given its bespoke nature, that seemed like an oversight, but then, the candidate has had to figure out what it means for her to be presidential a bit on the fly, and tailoring was probably pretty far down the list.
Still, like the speech itself, it was fit for purpose, offering a preview of what may come.
When, at the end of the evening, Ms. Harris was joined onstage by her husband, the potential first gentleman, Doug Emhoff, and her vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz (the two men in matching navy suits and light blue ties), and his wife, Gwen Walz (also in navy, by Carolina Herrera), they were the picture of a united front. They weren’t going back. Not even to the white suit.
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