By Chidinma Prisca Elebe
Fashion doesn’t need to hold a press conference or pass a law to make a statement. It shows up on the street, in the courtroom, at the protest and it speaks louder than words. Whether it’s a sharp suit or a slogan tee, clothing is never just clothing. It’s a statement, a strategy, or even a rebellion with a zipper.
THE AISLES OF A POLITICAL CLOSET
⮚Costumes of Power and Authority
What do judges, military generals, and religious leaders have in common? Uniforms! They wear authority. These regalia are not just pieces of clothing; they are symbolic armor, commanding respect and obedience. They are designed to silence you up before you even ask “am I in trouble?”
Power loves and wears a well put together outfit. From royal robes to bureaucratic blazers, clothes have long been used to command respect, impose hierarchy, and say “I’m in charge” without vocalizing it. Even elected officials wear carefully curated outfits to look just enough to seem trustworthy. When power walks into a room, it’s usually wearing something heavy with history.
⮚Protest has a wardrobe
Power wears uniforms. Protest wears style. It struts, poses, dares and demands to be seen. Moreso, movements like End SARS, End bad governance, and activisms have leveraged fashion through slogan T-shirts or an all-black attire to express dissent.
In today’s world, a woman refusing to wear a hijab in certain places, or insisting on wearing one in another place makes a statement louder than any chant.
Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is dress up.
⮚Your Body, Their Rules
The politics of clothing is basically the politics of the body. Who is allowed to show skin? Who is punished for doing so? Who is invisible no matter what they wear?
Debates around dress codes, particularly for women, are deeply political. Dress codes in schools, workplaces, and parliaments are rarely neutral. Terms like “professional,” “appropriate,” or “decent” often mask broader ideological biases such as sexist, racist, or classist. In these moments, the body is not a canvas but a battleground. The fight is not for fabric, but for autonomy.
Fashion may express freedom, but dress codes decide who gets to speak.
⮚Culture not Costume
Culture isn’t just style, it is history, survival and identity that when stripped of context and sold for trend, becomes costume making what was once sacred simply aesthetic and what was once survival, a theme.
Wearing something from another culture is not automatically wrong but when a designer profits from Indigenous designs without crediting or collaborating with the communities behind them, it becomes exploitation with a price tag not an inspiration or homage. The line between appreciation and appropriation is thin. When culture is shared with consent, credit, and care, it moves from costume to art which shows respectful exchange that empowers and elevates.
Cultural pieces are not just fashion seen on runways; it transcends to trade policies, labor laws, and environmental practices shaping what we wear and who pays the price. At the same time, designers from the diasporic communities are reclaiming their narratives redefining what “high fashion” looks like on their own terms.
⮚Dressing Up, Waking Up
Every outfit says something. Even “I don’t care” has a look. Apathy has a silhouette and neutrality has a color palette. You don’t need to be rich, famous, or a policy nerd to engage in politics. Just open your closet and you can see for yourself.
If anyone ever says “fashion isn’t political,” simply ask, “then why has it started revolutions, enforced laws and been regulated by the government?”
Fashion doesn’t need your vote. It casts its own.
Epilogue: Wear What You Mean
Fashion won’t save the world but it reflects and sometimes changes it. All it takes sometimes is a garment worn boldly, subversively, truthfully. One outfit can say: I resist, I reclaim, I belong. In essence, dress like it matters because it does.
Clothing doesn’t just cover us, it communicates power, revolt, and possibility.