WOMEN EMPOWERED: Fashions from the Frontline

Abstract

In November 2018, CNN, Teen Vogue, The Hill, and even Fox News reported that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) had loaned her shoes to a fashion exhibit at Cornell University (FIGURE 1). Worn-through shoes would typically be excluded from fashion collections, except that this pair had a special significance: the dirt and holes illustrated the miles of New York City blocks AOC walked as she went door-to-door gathering signatures for her campaign for New York’s Fourteenth Congressional District. Her shoes are also a refreshing testament to democracy—she did not buy her votes or seat; rather, she devoted the energy and put in the painstaking work of talking to the everyday-voting public to marshal support for her political bid. Thus, AOC’s shoes encapsulate the heart and soul of this exhibition and fashion studies in general: clothes matter, their materiality and the way they are worn (or worn-through) matter, and they matter profoundly for what we think is possible. This exhibition tells the story of how women, from the end of the nineteenth century to the present, have used dress and accouterments indirectly in roles that challenged the status quo and directly to assert their political rights and take their rightful positions in public spaces. Professor Denise Nicole Green, faculty advisor of the exhibition, explained in an interview that the overall aim was to showcase the concrete and specific material culture and garments of women’s lives to illustrate how fashion is a vehicle for political change and how “people who are marginalized use Promotional material for the exhibition featuring an archival photograph of Coretta Scott King speaking at a labor rally. Courtesy of the Kheel Center for LaborManagement Documentation & Archives at Cornell University