It was a budget the chancellor said would “match the greatest economic moments in Labour history”, and for the occasion Rachel Reeves chose to wear a garment to match the moment: a pussybow blouse. The UK’s first female chancellor knows more than most how the way female politicians dress can be picked over and weaponised. While researching her book Women of Westminster, a history of what women in parliament have achieved, she was struck by the way female MPs have “used fashion and appearance to tell us something about them and their politics, often to great effect”. Her choice of neckline is unlikely to have been an afterthought at such a historical moment. “What should you wear when you are the first woman ever to present a budget?” asked the writer and broadcaster Anne Perkins. “It’s quite an interesting challenge, isn’t it?” A close cousin of the necktie, the pussybow has historically been associated with women stepping into traditionally male spaces, such as the office. While it is Margaret Thatcher who is perhaps most famous for wearing a pussybow blouse among British politicians, Reeves is more likely to have had in mind the work and wardrobe of Barbara Castle – Labour’s “red queen”, the woman Michael Foot once called “the best socialist minister we’ve ever had”.
According to Perkins, Castle’s biographer, while it is impossible to say for sure whether Reeves was harking back to the former Blackburn MP, “she does know her history extremely well”. Castle, she explained, “exploited her femininity, but at the same time she was always anxious to look serious. And I guess that’s kind of what the pussybow does, isn’t it?” She may also have been referencing the early 20th-century Labour politician Ellen Wilkinson, who wore a proto-pussybow collar and whose photograph Reeves has above her desk. Wilkinson’s march against soaring unemployment in the north-east would be a potent legacy to call on. Popularised by Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent in the 1950s and 1960s, the pussybow blouse has a long history of stepping into the spotlight at high-drama, high-stakes moments. The US presidential nominee Kamala Harris wore one to make her vice-presidential victory speech in 2020. Kate Moss wore one to take the witness stand in the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial; Samantha Cameron wore one to Thatcher’s funeral; and Sara Danius – a permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy (the bestower of the Nobel prize in literature) who was asked to resign over her handling of a #MeToo scandal involving a man with links to the academy – sparked a movement with hers. The pussybow can, according to the fashion historian Bethan Bide, trace its origins back to the 17th century and the cravat. “Cravats have military origins and evolved into the modern necktie, so have long been associated with military and masculine power.” But, according to Bide, it isn’t quite that simple. “They are also highly decorative and about masculine adornment and a celebration of beauty.” This makes it “more complex than just saying that women wearing them are adopting masculine dress to symbolise status”. Bide also thinks it is “about showing that status can be decorative and aesthetic too – just like menswear was in the 17th and 18th centuries.” Away from the turbulence of politics, the pussybow blouse is also enjoying a quiet high street moment. Sienna Miller’s new second collection for M&S, which dropped this week, features white and zebra-print versions. But with politicians and high-profile women choosing to wear the talking-point style in talking-point moments, it won’t have peace and quiet for long.