The New Power of Pink

In September 2013, Marlien Rentmeester, founder of the fashion site Le Catch, was combing the racks at Shareen Vintage in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, when a fuchsia A-line frock caught her eye. “It was so shockingly pink, so cool and different, that I wore it out of the store,” she says. “On the street, women were giving me compliments left and right.” Rentmeester, the former West Coast editor for shopping magazine Lucky, had a sharp eye. In the months that followed, she started seeing pink everywhere: on streetwear blogs, in ad campaigns for Acne Studios and online beauty company Glossier, and in the pantsuits worn by Hillary Clinton.

Fast-forward to 2016, and pink is an even greater phenomenon. Rentmeester long considered pink “fussy, dainty, babyish, or even weak.” Now she says the color is emblematic of women on the rise financially, culturally, and politically—even if Clinton’s pink pantsuits didn’t get as much attention as the pink pussy-bow Gucci blouse Melania Trump wore to the second presidential debate. (Some pundits suggested the bow was a subtle rebuke to her husband’s critics after the “grab them by the p----” tape leaked.) “We interpret our environment through the colors we wear,” Rentmeester says. “Pink is unapologetic, dramatic, and bold. We’re taking it back and making it our own.” That reclamation is a story that’s not just about skirts, pantsuits, and blouses, but about how fashion can upend larger cultural ideas about power and gender.