Revolutionary Fashion: How Clothing Can Empower Social Movements
The past week of runways, presentations, and afterparties was clouded by the reality of the brutal and violent genocides taking place concurrently. Amidst the pain of injustice, influencers, designers, creators, and artists utilized fashion and personal style to remind us all to keep our eyes on Gaza. As we continue fighting for a Free Palestine and collective release from oppressive systems, how can sustainability and protest fashion be liberator’s tools against what Audre Lorde called “master’s tools”?
A Brief History of Fashion and Resistance
Fashion is inherently political. Clothing is a tool weaponized by the oppressor to homogenize, assimilate, and categorize the oppressed. By the same token, personal style has a long history as a powerful tool for resistance movements worldwide, reclaimed by the oppressed to express our solidarity and to unite behind our shared identities.
Symbols, colors, and articles of clothing are often how we illustrate our affinity with cultural and identity groups. However, oppressive structures have often manipulated appearance and style to further oppress historically marginalized groups. These systems of dominance are at risk of being disrupted and disempowered when the oppressed have access to a community of allies, so by villainizing cultural attire, forcing assimilation, and using style to isolate the oppressed from “good” society, those structures politicize fashion.
Fashion as a tool for resistance has been a hallmark of the LGBTQ liberation movement, the Black Panthers, and the various waves of the women's rights movement. However, resistance fashion is not always “in your face.” Certain style surges, such as indie sleaze or Vivienne Westwood and the punk movement offer a more restrained illustration of fashion and resistance. These movements often utilize sustainable fashion tools like DIY to disrupt current industry norms of manufactured, mass-produced trends. Fashion as resistance isn’t only wearing a pussy hat or putting a button on your jacket. Instead, our personal style choices are a tool to show consistent and necessary disruption—of proving to oppressive structures that we won’t fit into their normative, homogeneous boxes.
When fashion is political, it becomes a risk that the wearer is willing to take to illustrate their support. Most notably, throughout the oppression and colonization of Palestine, the Keffiyeh has become a symbol of resistance. The Keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian headdress, is known for its traditional weave. Its various patterns illustrate different parts of traditional Palestinian life and a connection to the land. Since the 1940s, the Keffiyeh has been worn to show support for Palestine. Today, we see more and more people wearing Keffiyehs regularly to illustrate to the public their identity or solidarity with Palestine. The politicization of the Keffiyeh has put its wearers in great danger, as we saw this winter in Vermont, where three students were shot for wearing the traditional garment. Many activists are proudly taking this risk to display their solidarity with Palestinians.
Others are showing their solidarity in more explicit ways. Wearing pins of the Palestinian flag, adorning their Grammy outfits with “Artists for a Ceasefire” pins (slay, Boy Genius), or adding symbols of poppies and watermelons—images associated with the colors of the Palestinian flag—to their accessory lineup. The use of these symbols has gotten people fired from their jobs and harassed on the street. Continuing to wear the symbols and illustrate support despite discrimination illustrates a commitment to the cause and draws more attention to the pursuit of a free Palestine, and by extension, a free global South. Fashion is a powerful way to force bystanders to face uncomfortable truths. Resistance is seldom safe or pleasant, and it does take courage, but our style choices can be an excellent way to begin to take those risks in small ways.
How can we illustrate solidarity through our style choices?
As we continue to fight for a free Palestine, we’ve curated a selection of examples of Palestinian activism in clothing and style for our own inspiration.
DIY
As punk taught us, the best way to disrupt trends and mainstream fashion is by DIYing. When you can’t get your hands on a Keffiyeh, a pin, or you just want your clothes to say something even stronger and even louder, do it yourself. Here are some of our favorite recent examples of DIY fashion for solidarity.
Maria Alia Al-sadek’s homemade Free Palestine necklace.
Let your makeup scream Palestinian solidarity
Patches, Paintings, and other protest fashion
Flag Pins & Watermelon Patches
@sincerely_summar on instagram
Fashion Week street style saw many examples of Palestinian solidarity. Photographer Darrel Hunter captured various images of folks incorporating Palestinian symbols into their everyday outfits, such as pins, Keffiyehs, and watermelon patches. Even Evelynn Escobar’s baby is wearing her solidarity, and as she says, “What's stopping you?”
Keffiyehs
@noore on instagram
Many people are adding Keffiyehs to their daily outfits and wearing them regularly to keep the symbol visible and the awareness alive. Influencers like Noor Elkhaldi, a Palestinian creator, wear their Keffiyehs as often as they use their voices.
Supporting Palestinian designers
@trashyclothing on instagram
Even Palestinian baddie Bella Hadid lives and breathes the movement by wearing and promoting clothes from the sustainable Palestinian label, Trashy Clothing.
Colors
@thatcurlytop on instagram
A simple way to illustrate solidarity is to incorporate the flag's colors into your outfits. Wearing green, red, white, and black clothes to celebrate Palestinian identity is a great and easy way to feel connected to the fight.