Gloria Steinem Made Feminism Look Cool
By Alexus Mosley
Photo Credit: Jill Krementz
Gloria Steinem spent more than six decades changing how people saw women. Along the way, she also created one of the 20th century's most recognizable personal styles.
Steinem, the journalist, activist, and co-founder of Ms. magazine, died this week at 92. Her political legacy is enormous, but so is the visual one. Gloria Steinem had a look. Long highlighted hair parted down the center, oversized aviators, miniskirts, knee-high boots, and simple knits and trousers were met with wide belts. The pieces shifted over time, but the formula stayed remarkably consistent.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
The consistency helped make Steinem instantly recognizable. At a time when feminism was often caricatured as incompatible with glamour, she appeared on television and magazine pages looking unmistakably stylish. She could discuss reproductive rights or political representation in a fitted turtleneck, low-slung belt, and tinted aviators that would look perfectly at home on a modern mood board.
Her glasses became especially iconic. Originally practical, they eventually became part of her visual identity, much like the center-parted hair and easy ’70s silhouettes that followed her for decades.
Maybe what made Steinem’s style interesting is that it wasn’t overworked, constantly reinventing herself. But simply knowing what suited her. In photographs from the 1960s and ’70s, there are mini hemlines, denim, leather, boots and body-skimming knits, but the overall effect is less “fashion statement” and more effortless New York cool.
Steinem never treated femininity as something women had to abandon to be taken seriously. Nor did her clothes deem her politics less credible. Over time, her look became part of her celebrity. The aviators stayed, and so did the center part and the ease that she became known for.
Steinem spent her life encouraging women to define themselves on their own terms.
She dressed that way, too.