Once upon a time, power dressing was identified with the uniform of the ruling class, whether demarcated by gender or profession or race, and those who would have access to it. Once upon a time, during her husband’s first presidential campaign, Michelle Obama wore floral dresses with sleeves to sugarcoat just how strong she really was.

What the runways revealed, however, is just how incoherent such tropes have become.

We are in a convulsive moment of change, one in which the old order and the new coexist in uneasy alliance; one in which received notions of presentation are increasingly being rejected in favor of individual identity. A person’s experience and history are worn as badges of pride, not disguised so as to better blend in.

You can see this on the public stage, whether with the freshman class in Congress or on the Oscars red carpet, with Billy Porter in his gown and Melissa McCarthy in her trousers and cape.

And you can see it increasingly on less spotlighted stages too: in the New York City Commission on Human Rights issuing new guidelines categorizing governance of hairstyles as racial discrimination; in Virgin Airlines announcing that it would no longer require its female flight attendants to wear skirts or makeup; and in Goldman Sachs announcing that it, too, was relaxing its dress code (though what that means in practice was pretty open-ended, especially when it comes to women). Each person gets to decide how to dress to signal authority.

The codes (because what is power dressing but a dress code by another name?) of old are going out the window. Both those that are explicit and dictated, and those that are unspoken but widely accepted.

This is a more complicated proposition for everyone, of course: designers, consumers, viewers, job hunters. More choice is alway harder. It places the burden on the dresser as opposed to the majority. It requires active thinking about clothes and identity as opposed to passive shopping.