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CNN
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Two fits, two ladies, one message: “Hotties for Harris.” At the least that was the phrase scrawled throughout banners at Kamala Harris’ marketing campaign rally in Atlanta Tuesday evening.
The occasion — a part of Harris’s bid to safe the Democratic presidential nomination — was headlined with a efficiency from rapper Megan Thee Stallion, 29, whose followers nickname themselves “hotties,” after the chart-topping 2019 monitor “Scorching Lady Summer season.”
The three-time Grammy winner arrived on stage to carry out in a pair of second-skin cobalt flares, an identical cropped blazer and tie by designer Abdul Sall. Beneath, her white collared shirt was equally slashed on the midriff, exposing her gleaming stomach button stud.
Minutes later, Harris walked onto her podium to rapturous applause — additionally in a blue pantsuit. Contemplating Megan’s typical stage put on options thong leotards and sheer catsuits, it doesn’t take a seasoned style critic to choose up on the sartorial message. At first look they may have been twinned; two ladies from very completely different corners, on the high of their respective careers, defining energy dressing on their very own phrases. (Harris did, nonetheless, undertake a few of Megan’s swagger with her challenge to Donald Trump to debate her: “If in case you have one thing to say, say it to my face.”)
The choreographed spectacle was a continuation of the Harris workforce’s modus operandi: Assembly the Gen Z voters the place they’re. From being endorsed by Charli XCX and co-opting the album of the summer, “Brat,” to capitalizing on the 32.3 million-strong fandom of Megan Thee Stallion, her advisors have been honing in on the 18-27 demographic.
However how do you seize the eye of youthful voters with out alienating your core viewers?
What Harris appears to be trialing is the facility of affiliation: Whereas she stays unchanged, and stylistically understated (the New York Occasions’ chief style critic Vanessa Friedman went additional, calling her a “boring” dresser, whereas acknowledging the double normal), her endorsers do the heavy lifting. So, if the Vice President stays set on biking by way of a rotating wardrobe of near-identical impartial pantsuits eternally paired together with her trusty “70-millimeter Manolo Blahnik heels,” — then maybe Megan was a form of proxy, doing the daredevil, eye-catching dressing for her.
Megan isn’t the primary musician to supply an endorsement to a presidential candidate (although Harris received’t be formally chosen on the Democratic Nationwide Conference till August). Throughout Hillary Clinton’s marketing campaign in 2016, popular culture endorsements had been there in equal measure from Madonna to Bon Jovi to Woman Gaga. Maybe one essentially the most memorable superstar supporters of Clinton’s marketing campaign eight years in the past was Beyoncé, who made a shock look throughout a rally in Cleveland, Ohio. The celebrity arrived onstage in a polka dot Givenchy pantsuit and a black sequinned collared shirt — one thing one may even think about Harris sporting for a night engagement in the present day.
It’s laborious to image Clinton signing off on a call to have Megan Thee Stallion “shake cheeks,” as one fan on Instagram wrote, in a cropped swimsuit at a rally. However within the age of TikTok, outfits should be grabbier and performances extra dramatic. Whereas it’s secure to imagine Harris’ will persist with her uniform, we would anticipate a constellation of fearless dressers to emerge round her — lending her a few of their star energy, and Gen Z enchantment, alongside the way in which.