THE POWER OF A BLAZER

Let's talk business... Chic.

Keep reading to learn more about how one staple piece can elevate your confidence and assert your dominance––all while reclaiming "femininity."

Who says men are the only ones who can rock pantsuits?

Isn't it interesting how most people subconsciously categorize fashion with gender? Skirts and dresses are designated to women, and pantsuits to men. Indeed, such stereotypes are much more complicated than merely categorizing individuals by their gender or sex to their sense of style––especially as androgynous style is as active as ever. However, removing modern gender ideologies from the equation, we have a subconscious sense of what a man or a women should wear. So, if masculinity is so often equated with power, why not reclaim one of its symbols—the blazer—as a way to make women’s power visible?

This idea is far from new. History shows that women have long used fashion as a political tool, from the suffragettes’ white ensembles to today’s power suits.

The women's suffrage movement fought for women's voting rights in the United States for many years. The movement took brave activists and reformers nearly a century to obtain the right, and the process was far from easy. Disagreements over gender norms consecutively put the movement at risk of collapse.

When women lobbied for the right to vote in the early 1900s, they used fashion to convey their message. Suffragettes sought to look presentable to the public, but outdated societal standards meant wearing long, uncomfortable dresses. These garments restricted physical mobility, essentially symbolizing conventional ideas regarding femininity and a woman’s place in society. Suffragettes dressed in all white to further their mission, rebelling through fashion.  While questioning the status quo, the suffragettes suffered criticism for appearing overly intimidating and manly.