ARTICLE: The Politics of Fashion

[Ryan Goble]

Interesting article from my alumni magazine on the intersection of clothes, culture, and power - an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Robin Givhan.

Jan 17, 2011


Givhan wrote that First Lady Michelle Obama's choice to wear a gown designed by Alexander McQueen to a state dinner honoring the President of China reflects a, "broad statement about the new realities of the fashion industry."

by Maryanne George
Fashion is for everyone, not just designers and divas, says Robin Givhan (M.A. ’88), the high-profile fashion editor of the Washington Post, who recently left to join Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

“Unless you plan to go naked, the fashion industry is relevant to you,” says Givhan, whose witty commentary on fashion as cultural anthropology earned her the first Pulitzer Prize for fashion in 2006. “Every time you say, ‘What am I going to wear today?’ you’re participating in the fashion industry. When you go into Target, remember that someone has designed those clothes. Now more than ever, fashion is democratized. To say the industry is frivolous is like saying the auto industry is irrelevant.”

At the Post, Givhan, a Detroit native, covered the news, trends, and business of the international fashion industry and wrote a weekly culture column. But her incisive analysis of fashion and the messages it sends about culture, power, and politics has put her in a class by herself.

Her work has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, American Vogue, Essence, the New Yorker, and she has contributed to several books including Runway Madness (Chronicle Books), No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade and the Rights of Garment Workers (Verso) and Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary: Reflections by Women Writers (Harper).

Read the full article HERE.