R.E.S.P.E.C.T. the Dress: Clothing and Activism in U.S. Women’s History
An exhibition tracing U.S. women’s history through faction, from the suffrage movement to contemporary liberation movements.
The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. It took many decades for advocates to reach the successful passage of federal-level suffrage for women in the United States. In the century that followed, challenges toward women’s right to vote, to hold office, and to participate fully and completely in American society remain. Advocates for and against women’s expanded rights have used clothing to define or support their mission.
From bloomer costumes to bra burning, the story of women’s rights activism in the United States is filled with references to how women dress. Radical fashion choices are often given as examples revealing the equally radical behaviors of activists. Yet few women adopted the dress reform style known as bloomers in the 1850s or burned their bras during the women’s liberation movement protests in the 1970s.
The 19th Amendment legally prohibited voter discrimination based on sex. Suffragists, the name U.S. activists advocating for women’s voting rights called themselves, played on and influenced the 1910s fashion for white lacy dresses, allowing them to express affiliation with women’s rights advocacy while also maintaining a less radical choice in dress. Suffragists used the three colors of white, purple, and yellow for sashes, buttons, and flags. Feminists in the 1970s and in the new millennium continue to wear these colors as a signal of support to earlier activists.
Whether they chose to be in or out of step with the fashions of their day, women’s rights activists have consistently demanded that they be respected as citizens and as humans, including in how they dress.
