vicemag:

Even as you pull that flak jacket over your camo trousers and stuff a sequined sweater into your knapsack (there might be a dance party after the demo), even as you draw an A on your arm and circle it or tattoo meat is murder on your vegan-sleek tummy, the ghosts of progressive fashions past are cheering you on.

Every generation of rabble-rousers believes it has invented its own unique style and negotiated its own sartorial relationship with the larger world, but those activists who have gone before, on whose incendiary shoulders we proudly stand, also had their special ways of signifying to one another. Without saying a word, they were members of a larger movement.

The subject is far too vast to tackle in one little article, but as natty dressers around the globe prepare to suit up and carry the tumultuous messages of 2011 forward—from Occupy Wall Street to the streets of the Middle East and collective actions in the squares of Leicester, Tahrir, Red, and Pearl—it could be a fun exercise to take a moment to examine the outfits favored by our illustrious activist ancestors over the past 100 or so years.

Herein is a brief, deeply personal, resolutely nonexhaustive, highly abbreviated look at a century of great moments in our shared revolutionary sartorial history.

WOMEN’S LIBERATION
As it turns out, the myth of rabid feminists burning their bras is just that—a fable. (The conceit was apparently dreamed up by a feminist journalist to liken the nascent women’s movement to draft-card-burning rallies.) While they may not have torched their dainties, on September 7, 1968, woman’s rights advocates demonstrated on the boardwalk outside the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, where participants (many in t-shirts, more than a few no doubt sans brassieres) were encouraged to toss materials that symbolized their gender oppression—girdles, high heels, hair curlers, etc.—into a “Freedom Trash Can.” Their original intent was to immolate these offending items, but alas, protesters weren’t granted a permit to light a fire on the boardwalk.

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