We often talk about fashion in the language of communication—a statement bag, a loud coat, quiet luxury—but nowhere is the power of clothing to get a point across is never more apparent than at a political protest. Today, the Women’s March brought out crowds from Washington, D.C. to Paris, France; Springfield, Missouri to Sydney, Australia. Millions around the world made history (no matter what a certain White House resident tells you)—and they did it in full resistance regalia. Though what that meant varied wildly: there were Nasty Woman pins and pink pussy hats, camouflage jackets and American-flag hijabs. T-shirts spelled out the names of Trayvon Martin and Sandra Bland, along with slogans like “#NotMyPresident” and “Keep Your Tiny Hands Off My Human Rights.” And then, of course, there were the signs: “Pussy Power,” “We The People,” “Black Lives Matter,” and enough artistic renderings of uteruses to fill a human anatomy library.
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We unite around clothing—gathering together to painstakingly paint messages on T-shirts (field trip to Michael’s, anyone?), coordinating outfits over group text with like-minded friends, or seeing shared issues represented on the backs of strangers. And it’s the images of what we wear and the signs we carry that will live on in history, joining the ranks of the nattily-dressed Civil Rights activists of the 1963 March on Washington, the body-painted SlutWalk marchers, and the turn of the century’s white-clad Suffragettes. So it’s no wonder we put a little extra effort into getting dressed.
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Below, see what some of the many men and women who stood up and made their voices heard wore to today’s march in the capital.