Breaking with tradition, U.S. senators may now wear pretty much whatever suits them

Transcript

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

In a break with tradition, U.S. senators may now wear, well, pretty much whatever suits them. That's because Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has directed the chamber's sergeant-at-arms to stop enforcing the informal dress code of the Senate, allowing senators to say bye-bye to business attire on the Senate floor. Now, the change got us thinking, why do most male politicians seem to have a kind of uniform sense of style? We reached out to men's fashion editor and writer Derek Guy. He reminded me that it hasn't always been like this, even with conservative icons.

DEREK GUY: If you look back at photos of Reagan and Bush Sr., they wore things like brown suits, patterned suits. And that really narrowed into usually a dark blue suit, sometimes a gray suit and white shirt and often just not even a patterned tie, just a solid-color tie.

MARTÍNEZ: Why do you think guys got so boring with their fashion choices in politics?

GUY: Historically, an interest in clothes has been coded as feminine and frivolous. So many politicians and men in general have just been very timid about their clothing choices. If you wear something other than the navy, dark worsted suit, then people might think you have an interest in clothing. Obviously, as a man who's interested in clothing, I think that's fine. But the history of clothing has been very gendered, encoded in terms of masculine and feminine kind of characteristics.

MARTÍNEZ: Do you think, Derek, that you can read an outfit and then guess a politician's party affiliation based on what they're wearing?

GUY: I don't think that Republicans and Democrats or third-party members dress terribly differently. The biggest dividing line in dress is more about age and generation. I noticed that older politicians such as Asa Hutchinson and even Joe Biden - they dress better than their younger counterparts. And I think that's partly because they come from a generation where people wore a coat and tie with more regularity. So they're a little bit more familiar with it. For example, Joe Biden - you know, he always has his trousers hemmed correctly. They're never kind of, like, puddling over the ankles. His trousers are never too tight. His coat fits correctly, whereas Matt Gaetz and George Santos - they wear their clothes much too tight. The jackets are too short. The shoes are wrong. And I think it's just because they didn't grow up in a coat and tie.

MARTÍNEZ: Because I remember when Marco Rubio wore those boots with the zipper on the side. I mean, kind of, like, an Austin Powers feel to him, in a way. I remember, I mean, he caught a lot of flak for that.

GUY: Yeah, I think that's the one area where dress does matter for politics - is that when Rubio wore those boots, he caused a whole social media stir, and then that spilled over into the mainstream press. They all wrote about how people are now talking about Rubio's boots. It's not that voters vote based on whether a politician's well-dressed. It's that, sometimes, if you wear something very unusual, it ends up being a talking point. And in Rubio's case, he wore it while running for president. And it ended up being, like, a week worth of discourse. And I think that's where dress matters. You don't want your dress to be the focus of attention. You want what you're talking about to be the focus of attention. A week's worth of talking about his boots means a week worth of not talking about issues that actually matter to voters. And again, it's not that voters will vote based on his boots. It's that you just lost a week in the primary, which is a fairly long time in the primary election, not communicating to voters the issues that will actually affect them.

MARTÍNEZ: Menswear writer Derek Guy edits the Put This On blog. Derek, thanks a lot.

GUY: Thank you for having me on.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "VOGUE")

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