What's Nostalgia Got To Do With It? —
Mementoes From The Trash Bin Of History
Vol. I, Issue I - April 2010

It is boxy, mannish, with shoulder pads fit for a linebacker and a skirt that tapes to below the knee. You pair it with a blouse that ties about the neck in a floppy bow, sheer black pantyhose, pumps that match your purse. Big earrings, big hair. Think Princess Di, in the early days. Think Margaret Thatcher, Joan Collins in Dynasty, Ivana Trump.

At the back of my closet, I’ve saved a few relics of my New York City work wardrobe, circa 1986. I take off my jeans and try on one of the suits, a Christian Dior number in a tiny black-and-white check. The skirt no longer buttons at the waist, but otherwise it fits. The jacket has big black buttons, grosgrain trim. I slide on heels and turn before the mirror. I used to dress like this every morning: pantyhose, pumps, blouse, skirt, jewelry, jacket, briefcase, coat. On the rare days I wasn’t out of town with a client, I’d hail a cab and ride uptown to work. I’d buy a latte at the kiosk in the lobby of my building—a green-glass skyscraper wedged into a midtown block—and crowd into the elevator along with all the men in their dark suits and white shirts and understated ties. We’d check out our reflections in the brass button panel as the elevator rose. We were on our way.

I turn again. The jacket’s padded shoulders are ridiculous, really. They’d look even more ridiculous with a cravat-style blouse. I never liked those foppish bows. They always seemed incongruously girly, a throwback to Victorian femininity—an anxious gesture rather than an aggressive one, a reminder of the incongruity of a woman in a suit.

It seems to me now that the power suit is a parody: the “Organization Man” in drag. Only the joke is not on him.

* * *

I flew to New York to interview for jobs with management consulting firms on January 28, 1986, the day the Challenger blew up. In the morning, I put on my interview suit. It was a beige-checked Brioni with a pleated skirt that my father had obtained for me as part of a business deal with an importer friend. I tucked in my silk blouse and tied the bow. I spent the day in interviews, almost exclusively with men. I ran the numbers on the case study problems they posed. I told them about my experience serving as the first woman business manager in my college newspaper’s 110-year history. They informed me that nearly one-third of the incoming associates were women, and assured me that the partnership would soon reflect those numbers, too.

Before I moved to New York, I went shopping with my mom. We bought suits: navy pinstripes, gray flannel, basic black. At Ann Taylor, I chose a brown suit with huge shoulders and a shawl collar; at Brooks Brothers, I picked a lavender linen suit for summer. I bought a black-and-white hound’s tooth jacket with a black skirt and embroidered top. I bought blouses. I bought shoes. I bought a briefcase. I was set.

Just about the only thing I could imagine about the job was what it would be like to dress up in those new clothes. I pictured myself at a conference table, my padded shoulders squared, my legs crossed beneath my sober skirt, a cigarette tipped between my fingers (I didn’t smoke, but still). I saw myself as if from a distance, projected on a screen. But if my future was a film, it was one I’d never seen. My father was the businessman, and the only woman he worked with was his secretary, for whom he brought back presents when we went away on trips. My mother had taught fifth grade in the Boston public schools but was fired when she got pregnant in 1963. Her mantra was, “Don’t be like me.”

* * *

There were no women CEOs in 1987, the year that I turned twenty-four and started work. None of us was close enough to the glass ceiling, back then, to understand that shoulder pads would offer no protection for our heads. (The expression “glass ceiling,” in fact, had just been coined that year.) We weren’t worried, yet, about how we’d negotiate all those bows and buttons if we wanted to nurse our kids. By the time I left the firm, in 1997, the shoulder pads and floppy ties had happily gone out of style. Most of us were wearing shorter skirts, scoop-neck tops, or dresses. One or two of us even braved a pant suit now and then. We were respected, well-paid, and smart. But the ranks of women partners, which by then included me, had not budged past four percent. Most of us were single, though a few had stay-at-home spouses or a staff of nannies around the clock, just like our male colleagues. We took the demands of the job—the hours, the travel, the intensity—for granted. We tailored ourselves to fit.

* * *

For several years, I worked with a lesbian who had not come out at work. Her partner (whom she referred to in public as “the nanny”) stayed home with their four adopted kids. Whenever we had a tough client meeting, we’d agree to wear our pin-striped suits. We’d don our highest heels as well, which brought her to about six feet. “You gotta look ‘em in the eye,” she said.

Once I made the mistake of wearing a dress to a meeting of telecom network engineers in Birmingham, Alabama. The dress was a bright Kelly green, with a black velvet collar and a double row of buttons down the front. The secretary who escorted me to the conference room was the only woman I saw that entire day. She looked me up and down and said, “You’re brave to wear that here.” It was only later—stammering on like a wounded peacock in front of a room full of hostile men—that I understood what she’d meant.

The last time I ever wore a suit I’d recently given birth and was still nursing around the clock. I’d agreed to facilitate an all-day offsite meeting for a group of dot-com executives negotiating a deal. I chose a purple suit from Barney’s with a long jacket and a short skirt and, feeling pleased that I could even close the zipper around my post-partum waist, kissed my baby girl goodbye. My clients (all men) showed up in tee shirts and jeans. The conference center provided no place to pump. My breasts grew hard and painful and leaked right through my blouse. I cried the whole drive home.

The power suit was a costume, a straight-jacket, armor, camouflage.


In the end, for me at least, the power suit was empty. I shriveled up inside and blew away.

* * *

All clothing is a system of signs, as Barthes pointed out long ago. We wear our identities, quite literally, on our sleeves: we construct ourselves in clothes, wrap ourselves in myth. In our mannish power suits, we women of the ‘80s covered our bodies with the culture’s signs of authority, professionalism, prestige. We covered our bodies and stood out. We covered our bodies and fit in.

The worlds of work and domesticity still do not easily coexist. The power suit, in any incarnation, is inflexible. You wouldn’t cook dinner in a power suit. You wouldn’t get down on the floor to build Legos with your kids.

* * *

I know I’ll never wear my suits again, but I can’t quite bring myself to get rid of them, either. They’re well made, of fine fabrics you can’t find anymore. I’ve saved the Brioni I wore to my first interview, the purple suit, the black-and-white one with the tiny checks. Maybe I’ll give them to my eleven-year old daughter for dress-up. “Is this really what you used to wear to work, Mommy?” she will say. “Maybe I’ll be a business woman, too!” We will watch her twirl before the mirror, bird-legged in my too-big heels, and we’ll giggle at the thought. “You can be anything you want,” I’ll say. But even now, I’m not really sure what to wish for her at all.

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