The clothes make the democracy

Derek Guy and the gendered aesthetics of this election

Fashion has always been political. From ancient Rome to Colonial America, sumptuary laws enforced social hierarchies by making it illegal for people of the lower classes to buy luxury goods and clothing. In 1790, South Carolina passed a law forbidding enslaved people from wearing anything finer than “Negro cloth,” which referred to durable but coarse and uncomfortable fabrics.

Controlling fashion norms meant enforcing a pattern of behavior designed to keep people in their place. “Clothing,” writes Joshua Miller, professor of government and law at Lafayette College, “is not simply a private or personal matter; it implies the existence of an intersubjective social world in which one presents oneself and is seen by others.” 

Clothing can signal a person’s station. It can flaunt itself. It can be a rebellion. It can be compliance. And clothing can also declare allegiance to a class or group of people without even saying a word.

In the past decade, fashion critiques of the political class have focused on political outsiders. Barack Obama’s tan suit, Michelle Obama’s bare arms, Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits. Fashion critique falls the hardest on people who seem to be rising above the determined social order

But in 2024, Derek Guy is critiquing the fashion of the white men in power. Guy, who posts on social media under the handle @DieWorkWear, has gone viral criticizing the looks of JV Vance, Matt Gaetz and others. As politicians spread lies about Haitian immigrants in Ohio, Guy posted a thread analyzing the elevated style of Gerard Basquiat, the father of neo-expressionist Jean-Michel Basquiat, comparing him to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. The analysis focuses on fashion, pointing out the lines, the fit, fabrics, and the comparative cleanliness of the men’s suits.

But it absolutely pissed people off. Because when you uphold an immigrant’s style above that of a senator whose rhetoric is anti-immigrant and racist, it threatens the balance of power. 

Recently, the right-wing British commentator Carl Benjamin attacked Guy on Twitter, arguing that Guy’s “politics destroyed the kitschy things he loved.” Benjamin suggested that by embracing immigration and multiculturalism, Guy was in some way undermining the existence of classic men’s style. Guy responded by posting pictures of Benjamin in bad outfits, commenting, “which of my beliefs caused this? did multiculturalism fasten that bottom-button? did an immigrant make you wear a lavender necktie with a black dress shirt? did wealth redistribution put you in a suit jacket and jeans? i need to know so i can beat their ass.”

Implicit in Benjamin’s attack was that critiques of fashion are critiques of power. And while most modern fashion critics focus on those outside of power, turning the lens on those who uphold power makes everyone a little nervous.

The clothing of the 2024 election has been remarkable, not specifically for the style itself but for what allegiances it has formed. You would think that in an election cycle featuring a major party nominee who is a woman and person of color, the fashion critique would focus on her. And there have been moments, like when political commentators lost their minds that a very successful woman would wear $800 earrings. 

But the political fashion of the moment isn’t the silhouettes of Harris, but the ball caps and t-shirts of her running mate, Tim Walz, who dresses down in jeans, t-shirt, and camo hats. His fashion is remarkable for how unremarkable it is. How normal it is. 

And that’s exactly the point. This election is about defining who and what gets to define the normal American experience. So having a politician, so authentically embodies that normal, redistributes our idea of power.

In a phone interview, Guy explained that since the 1970s, American politicians have tried to dress down to seem more relatable. After Watergate, the public developed a healthy wariness of men in suits, and male politicos’ fashion has shifted accordingly. “Jimmy Carter, for example, often campaigned without a tailored jacket. He would just campaign in a dress shirt and tie — that continued with Bill Clinton. And then over time Obama, shed the tie.” Guy points out that Jeb Bush wore sweaters, and during his own primary campaign, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis often appeared in a fishing shirt.

Dressing down, Guy notes, creates a tension between the aesthetics of respectability and those of relatability,

Former President Donald Trump is an exception. He has not tried to dress down. When he isn’t golfing, he usually wears a suit and tie. His uniform speaks to the power afforded to a man in a suit. He gets to claim the title of a populist while living in a golden apartment because, while his suits don’t fit well, the mantle of power does. And the suit gives off the ethos of the success many Americans aspire to. He dresses like the power other people want but can’t have.

But ideas about who and what are relatable and respectable and aspirational are changing, and not by accident. If the 2024 election is about gender, it’s about how gender can be expressed through power; which genders live in service of the others; who gets to be a man; and how womanhood is policed. 

The election of 2016 was also about gender, but there the referendum was on Clinton’s performance of womanhood and Trump’s assault of women. Now, in 2024, the focus on gender is a referendum on the masculinity of Trump, Vance, and Walz. 

Of the three men running for higher office, Walz is the one who dresses most traditionally like a “regular guy” — Carhartt, camo, t-shirts, jeans. And yet, he is also the politician who embraces the most radically inclusive LGBTQ policies that open up rather than shutting down the definitions of gender.

I’m not saying Walz dresses like this to hide his radical ideas. I think someone can be both progressive and a Midwestern dad. But one helps the other. And it works because it’s authentic. Walz dresses like the person we are, not the person we aspire to be.

On the other side, Guy points out that the fashion of Vance, while it’s currently coded as masculine, was popularized in the early 2000s as a metrosexual look — jeans, suit jackets, coiffed hair. And metrosexual, then, was gay-coded. So too is the look of a tailored and well-fitted suit. 

Guy explains, “I think there is this groundswell of, like, certain men who want to do this very traditional look. But as I often note on my Twitter account, they don’t do it very well because it's actually very hard to do it well now, because the clothiers that traditionally made that look are essentially gone. In order to do the 1950s tailored aesthetic well, you essentially have to be a clotheshorse. And if you're very hung up on gender, I think you probably run into problems with that, because then you also have to be a bit very interested in fashion, essentially.”

That means the aesthetic of many politicians who try to restrict gender expression was popularized by queer people. 

And when we talk about men’s fashion, what we are really talking about is masculinity, and power, and how it walks through the world, how it dresses, and how it looks, and how it ties a Windsor knot. And this kind of analysis lays bare the realities of our democracy. And puts male power on the defensive, in a place it’s needed to be all along.

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Further reading:

Derek Guy wrote about Tim Walz and the fashion of authenticity for Politico.

And I think a lot about this 2021 op-ed by Tressie McMillan Cottom on Kyrsten Sinema’s style.

Dwell interviewed Guy about fashion and affordable housing.

In 2020, Maya Singer wrote a comprehensive look at the interplay between fashion and politics.