Political outfit: wear your beliefs on your sleeve

For centuries, clothing has been a means of telling the world what we care about. Today, it’s still one of the most popular forms of aligning yourself with a certain cause or being direct about your political beliefs.

The rise of social media and mass production have made it all that more possible to promote and produce politically influenced fashion. Fashion is a tool for communication, and it is one of the platforms people most readily understand and identify with, making it the perfect channel to convey one’s beliefs. After all, what we wear is imbued with layers of meaning, and sometimes you need a different way to get your point across.

Vivienne Westwood regularly uses the runway to push humanitarian and ecological causes, but it was her brand of punk political T-shirts in the 1970s that really got the fashion-on-the-march idea ignited. Moving forward to the 1980s, designer Katharine Hamnett became one of the first to harness the power of the fashion slogan and make it an open political statement. Her oversized T-shirts featuring bold declarations such as “Choose life, no war” and “Save Africa” became cultural signposts for those times.

The politically charged fashion statement of the slogan T-shirt seems to be as relevant today as it was in the 1980s, and it’s impossible to imagine a campaign without a sea of Ts, provoking and challenging ideas while also recruiting a variable army of on-message supporters to spread the word.

A case in point is the recently launched Repeal Project, set up by Anna Cosgrave, which aims to raise money for the Abortion Rights Campaign and that demonstrates just how powerful clothing can be. Within a hour of going on sale, the simple black sweatshirt emblazoned with the word Repeal sold out, dominating chat on Irish Twitter and Instagram.

Whether it be for abortion, LGBT rights or climate change, sartorial activism can be empowering.