Democratic women maintain their tradition of wearing suffragist white

In white pantsuits, turtlenecks and scarves, Democratic women stood out again in a sea of ​​dark suits Thursday evening during the State of the Union address, wearing suffragist white as a form of solidarity and protest against former President Donald J. Trump.

The fashion statement began during Mr. Trump’s presidency, when he first addressed a joint session of Congress in 2017 and laid out his policy agenda. (Technically, there was no State of the Union that year.) Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader at the time, posted a photo of Democratic congresswomen dressed all in white, proverb that they did this in support of women’s rights, while the president did not.

With the exception of 2018, when some Democratic women wore black in support of the #MeToo movement, many women have since worn white to State of the Union addresses.

In 2019, Democratic women in white pantsuits and blouses jumped up to applaud and high-five each other when Trump said a record number of women were serving in Congress, a century after the 19th Amendment was passed, giving women the right to vote. .

The outfits have evolved since 2017. At this year’s State of the Union, in addition to their white suit jackets, some women wore kente cloth, a traditional African textile, and others had pink accents such as fuchsia pants and flower pins.

White, which symbolizes purity, along with purple and gold were the official colors of the National Women’s Party and the suffragist movement.

In recent decades, women in politics have donned white at historic moments, including Geraldine Ferraro when she accepted her nomination as the first female candidate for vice president at the 1984 Democratic Convention. Hillary Rodham Clinton often wore white during her campaign and did so when she accepted the Democratic Party nomination in 2016.