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Kamala’s kicks, Tim’s eyelids and the red ties that unite Trump and Vance • Kansas Reflector

Heory
Kamala’s kicks, Tim’s eyelids and the red ties that unite Trump and Vance • Kansas Reflector

With Election Day approaching, candidates are courting voters in every way possible: targeted ads, text messages, taunts and campaign speeches.

As a fashion historian, I believe that campaigning misses the point about clothing, which is a quiet but effective way for candidates to tell Americans who they are.

It is an act as old as power itself.

“Clothes, from the king’s mantle down, are symbolic,” wrote Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle in Sartor Resartus, a foundational work in the field of fashion studies.

Tim Walz, Kamala Harris, JD Vance and Donald Trump have all taken a page from this 1834 publication. Each is using the emblem to appeal to voters — and suggest how they will lead.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks at a campaign rally in Minneapolis in January 2020. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

The People’s Crown

What’s more American than a baseball cap?

When Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz wears one on the campaign trail, he does more than just hide his thinning hair.

To the chagrin of many parishioners and office managers, baseball caps have moved beyond being worn in the stadium to become a ubiquitous symbol of the American way of life.

“It’s completely egalitarian,” summed up the brand guru at New Era, the official cap supplier of Major League Baseball. “It’s the people’s crown.”

The baseball cap was born out of practicality. Shaded eyes see better. In the 1880s, baseball players chose styles ranging from the porter-inspired, thick pillbox to something a newsboy might wear. Consumer choice led manufacturers like Spalding to lean on the domed design still in use today.

I think Walz wears these hats to tell voters, “Hey, I’m just like you.”

He has a hat for every occasion. The former high school coach wears a mesh-sided trucker cap when he organizes fishing tournaments. He wears a masked number when he talks to other hunters. He dresses up as an NFL version of the Minnesota Vikings when he eats corn dogs with reporters and another of Goldy Gopher — the University of Minnesota mascot — when he hugs piglets at the state fair.

Kamala Harris wears Chuck Taylor All-Stars sneakers during a campaign event in 2019. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Smooth movements

Whether she’s dancing to the beat of drums or frying burgers, presidential candidate Kamala Harris can usually be seen in a classic pair of Chuck Taylor All-Stars.

Marquis Mills Converse designed the sneakers at his Massachusetts-based rubber shoe company in 1917 in an attempt to appeal to athletes who played basketball, a relatively new sport that was growing in popularity. The shoes’ diagonal-tread soles helped prevent slipping on the basketball courts that were popping up on college campuses and in cities across the country.

Today, it is impossible to overstate the cultural significance of the Chuck Taylor All-Star.

Fashion historians say the shoe’s democratic origins—at one point it dominated 70 percent of the basketball shoe market—are part of its enduring appeal. A company archivist attributes its success to its utilitarian simplicity.

However, in the 1970s, the most popular model among basketball players became the Adidas Superstar model, which was lighter and had protective shell-shaped toes.

No matter. California skateboarders loved the All-Star soles, which provided extra grip on their boards. So it’s kind of fitting that the California politician made the shoe part of her signature style.

The plunging neckline Harris wears was introduced in the 1950s for non-sports products. Harris raves about its practicality and versatility.

“I run through airports in my Converse sneakers,” she told The Cut, an online fashion magazine, in 2017. “I have a whole collection… a pair of black leather shoes, a pair of white shoes, I have some that don’t have laces, some that do.”

She wore the shoes on the cover of Vogue in 2021, and they’re now a permanent fixture as she runs for the top job.

Beyond the comfort these shoes offer the candidate who often walks on their feet, I think they convey a more subtle message that harkens back to their roots: ready to move, ready to change, ready to win.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance takes after his boss by wearing a red tie. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Imitation is flattery

The red tie is nothing new. For centuries, military commanders and their armies have used red ties to show power and aggression. Chinese imperial warriors wore red bandanas. To match the color of Emperor Trajan’s cape, Roman soldiers wore red kerchiefs.

Former President Trump has worn a red tie since the early 1980s, when he was best known as a ruthless real estate tycoon. As president, he doubled down on “Republican red.”

While red has long been associated with dominance and passion, it only became the color of the Republican Party in the past few decades after television stations adopted the party’s color to report state election results.

As Oscar Wilde wrote, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” and Trump supporters have criticized his clothing style.

Vance is one of them. The Republican vice presidential candidate’s adoption of the red tie is the cherry on top of his transformation from tech bro to MAGA acolyte.

As menswear expert Derek Guy has written, Vance has undergone a makeover en route to the vice presidential nomination. Out went the off-the-rack, gray blazers, paired with open-collar, button-down shirts and nice jeans.

In their place came the new boss’s uniform: navy blue suits, worn with more formal, spread collars — and, of course, shiny red ties.

Guy calls Vance’s transformation a ‘sartorial change’ my faultway to backtrack on previous criticism and prove his loyalty to Trump.”

Vance’s suits are more tailored than Trump’s, and his ties are a tad looser. But the message is the same as it has been for millennia: “I’m the guy in the room who leads this army.”

Well, until Trump comes along.

Donald Trump’s self-tanner adds a patina of vigor to the 78-year-old candidate. (Nic Antaya/Getty Images)

Orange crush

Trump claims that the orange tint of his skin is due to energy-saving light bulbs, but that’s not all.

Likened by The New York Times to “Warhol’s shocking white hair or Big Bird’s scarlet plumage,” Trump’s fake tan was “a culturally ingrained representation of himself long before he entered politics,” a look that has been picked apart by beauty editors, criticized by cartoonists and mercilessly mocked by his critics.

And yet it still shines. Why?

While sun worship has existed since time immemorial, tanned skin is a cultural phenomenon of the 20th century. The trend is often attributed to French fashion designer Coco Chanel, who told Vogue in 1929, “A golden tan is the epitome of chic.” More likely, tanned skin was popularized by the boom in outdoor activities, such as sailing, tennis, and golf, which became the preserve of the rich and famous.

Trump’s tan is a reflection of his public image as a wealthy power broker. Sociologists studying why people are motivated to fake tan have found that “tanned white skin can signal that the person is healthy, relatively affluent, sociable, physically fit, and attractive.”

To achieve this, sunseekers turned to science. The first tanning salon opened in 1978. By 2004, there were 50,000 establishments serving 28 million customers.

Self-tanners—the widely-acclaimed source of Trump’s skin tone—have been around since Chanel. They started out as a form of makeup. But by the 1970s, all the major cosmetics brands were offering chemical versions that stained the skin. Soon, magazine editors were offering instructions on how to prep the skin and apply the product evenly, a problem that sometimes plagued Trump.

For Trump, self-tanner’s ability to convey youth and vigor matters even more than in the past, as the former president’s age has become fodder for critics.

This article was contributed by columnist Kate Barilla.

This article is reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.