Has any political figure ever been less notable for their wardrobe choices than Kamala Harris?
Most elected officials (or, for that matter, those officials’ spouses) use clothes in some communicative capacity. There was Hillary Clinton and her carrot-leg pantsuits in a rainbow of colors that helped her inscribe (for better or worse) an immediate iconography of female power. Or Nancy Pelosi with the fiery Max Mara coat that marked her as a headstrong woman willing to spar with then-President Donald Trump, who himself has his too-long ties, which provide a visual allegory for his ego. Even President Biden has his aviators, which fans and detractors have latched on to as a symbol of his gentle machismo.
Harris, who is the likely Democratic nominee following Biden’s decision to step aside in the 2024 election, has largely resisted those moments. Her wardrobe of pantsuits comes from the designer brands, such as Altuzarra, Akris and Dolce & Gabbana, that populate boardrooms and white-shoe law firms, and is mostly in safe, corporate tones such as banker blue and pale purple. Regardless of the designer, she almost always wears long jackets with strong shoulders and boot-cut trousers. It’s so unremarkable that it seems to resist, well, remarking.
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End of carouselEarly on in her tenure as vice president, she dipped her toe in the game of overt sartorial diplomacy that female political figures are expected to play. In January 2021, WWD reported that Harris was rumored to be working with Karla Welch, a celebrity stylist known for her work with Justin Bieber and a vocal Democrat who posts frequently on Instagram about civil rights, diversity and Trump’s ongoing legal tribulations.
For the inauguration, Harris, who is Black and of South Asian descent, wore pieces by Black designers such as Sergio Hudson, Christopher John Rogers and Kerby Jean-Raymond of Pyer Moss. That moment, in which she became the first woman to occupy the office of vice president, was one she wanted to enshrine with her choice of clothing.
That same month, she posed for the cover of Vogue, photographed by Tyler Mitchell and wearing her own clothes, although then-Vogue contributor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson was also there as sittings editor, a role that grants a stylist’s eye to a subject’s own choices. The images were roundly criticized for their casualness: her jeans, her sneakers, the loose swag of pink fabric behind her. “The cover did not give Kamala D. Harris due respect,” Washington Post senior critic-at-large Robin Givhan wrote at the time. “It was overly familiar.”
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It was then decided, without anyone saying as much, that clothing simply wasn’t her métier. In fact, that gave her, and us, a sense of liberation. Perhaps we cared about what she wore only because she is a woman. By dressing unexceptionally or appearing merely dutiful in the arena of appearance, she and we could focus on her job and accomplishments instead of what she looked like performing them. Even websites and social media accounts that once tracked her style choices, like What Kamala Wore and Kamala’s Closet, have gone dormant in the past few years.
Harris has indeed spent the past year shoring up and sharpening her political power: Even before Biden’s shaky debate performance, she had evolved into one of the administration’s most effective and straightforward communicators, especially on issues such as maternal mortality and abortion.
Already, a narrative that she has been ineffectual or limited in her reach has been swept away by Democrats and their supporters, supplanted by images of her as a meme-ready auntie and callbacks to her moments of keen unflappability, such as her coolheaded interrogation of Brett M. Kavanaugh during his 2018 confirmation hearings. Whether that’s an earnest reassessment of our telling of her history or an attempt to paper over legitimate concerns in the haste to anoint a promising competitor to Trump, she has spent the past several months subtly making changes to what she wears. They have been so quiet you may not have noticed them, but they have given Harris a new gloss of power and polish — perhaps showing us how she most comfortably imagines herself.
Maybe it was the Celine dress. In late April, Harris wore a fitted turtleneck gown, covered in sequins, by the French label designed by Hedi Slimane. The sparkles thinned at the neck of the dress, revealing a bit of shoulder. It wasn’t an exceptional dress, but the choice of a gown by fashion’s king of cool — the guy who invented skinny jeans, who pioneered sleek and commercial designer fashion, and who is rumored to be the next designer of the house of Chanel — showed a passing interest, at least, in the idea that people pay a lot of money for a certain kind of dress because its designer can cut a mean silhouette. She had a big, thick costume ring on her index finger. She looked almost hip. Celine is neither a go-to for white-collar career women, as Altuzarra and Dolce & Gabbana are, nor a narrative-driven fashion brand that tells a story about its maker, as Christopher John Rogers and Gabriela Hearst, another favorite of women in politics. It is a brand beloved by people who love exacting if familiar clothes that tell precisely the story the wearer wants to tell: I am powerful, together, demanding.
A month later, she attended the White House state dinner for Kenya wearing a forest-green cape gown, secured with a gold rosette at the neck and matching gold bangles on her forearms, by the French brand Chloé. That brand just recently appointed a new designer, a French woman, Chemena Kamali, with terrific je ne sais quoi and even more terrific hair who has already set off a wave of excitement for her ultrafeminine, slightly bohemian designs. Again, these are the kinds of detail that Harris seems unlikely to care about. Surely Harris isn’t gunning for the approval of Vogue or the fashion cognoscenti — rather, it seems likely she simply wanted to look great.
And for her most recent magazine profile, a lengthy interview with Rolling Stone accompanied by photographs by Flo Ngala, she looked radiant, in a white suit with a black scarf blouse. Relaxed. At ease. She glowed here, where she sank in Vogue. Leslie Fremar, a Hollywood power stylist, is credited with styling the images; Fremar works with no-nonsense, high-gloss actresses such as Charlize Theron and Jennifer Connelly — women who always look as perfectly conceived in their gowns as Greek statues in their chitons. Fremar and her representatives did not respond to requests for comment as to whether she is now advising Harris on her wardrobe, but whether it was a one-time collaboration or an ongoing partnership, it seems as though it left an impression.
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This is by no means a full-blown makeover. Rather, it is another intimation of how Harris has hardened her persona into something less ambivalent. Reporting for the Atlantic last year, Elaina Plott Calabro wrote that Harris had come to the nomination for vice president at a moment when diversity and representation seemed tantamount — and that, despite her background, such politicking is slightly alien to the former prosecutor and senator.
She still wears dresses by Sergio Hudson, choosing one of his designs for last year’s White House correspondents’ dinner, for example. But aside from those moments in the inauguration, she hasn’t prioritized wearing designers whose backgrounds might tie into her own — perhaps a strategic choice when many will want to make it the focus. It seems as though dressing to explain her identity — to tell her story, as is so popular among celebrities and political figures today — is not her comfort zone. Instead, it’s a cool sheen of strength.
Finally, Harris’s wardrobe tells us something: that she is most confident looking in control.
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