This year has been a pivotal one for me both personally and professionally. I took bigger risks, sought out new experiences, and demanded more from myself than ever before. I’m finally comfortable with being me and this new celebration of my fiercest realest inner self has manifested into my sartorial choices.
If there was a theme for the moves I made in 2018, power suits are it.
My relationship with pant suits began early on watching my mother get ready for work. She is a dynamic woman who navigates the corporate world with so much class and elegance, I always feel inspired. My mom has an impeccable collection of pant suits that I would frequently borrow from, but it wasn’t until recently that I focused on growing a collection of my own. When I left the medical field for corporate marketing last year, it gave me a chance to ditch the scrubs and focus on building a better professional wardrobe. I had an opportunity to experiment with my professional style and it was such a great year to do so.
Gender fluidity is important to me. I was never a girly girl growing up because my mom, who was quite the tomboy herself, hated dressing me up in frilly clothes. Crossing the lines of what is menswear versus womenswear is in many ways challenging the norm, which is why I find pant suits so fascinating. Suits symbolize strength, masculinity, boldness, and ambition — it’s a total power move.
As women continue to navigate new spaces that were previously reserved for men, I can’t think of a better fashion statement for the changing times. I know they are just clothes, but in some ways power suits represent the way women are challenging societal norms, questioning the conventions of gender, restructuring roles and power dynamics, and reimagining femininity.
Here are some ways I’ve styled the power suit this year:
Dallas [Intuitive] 