Rather, it was the moment, late in the show, when Ms. Monáe finally addressed Time’s Up from the stage, and then a host of women, including Camila Cabello, Andra Day, Ms. Lauper and the Resistance Revival Chorus appeared to accompany Kesha in her anthem to personal survival and strength, “Praying” — all wearing different outfits in suffragist white.

It was an unmistakable visual statement of solidarity, written in style.

And it underscored not just the message of the song, but the fact that once the door has been opened to using fashion to make more than just a pretty paparazzi-snagging picture, it’s almost impossible to go back.

This seems to have occurred to the music industry late in the game, when a call went out to guests to wear white roses in support of Time’s Up, because white “stands for hope, peace, sympathy and resistance,” according to the email urging support. Many complied, though as a practical matter it proved more effective for male attendees, who could simply pin a bud to their lapel, than the women, whose strapless, lacy and otherwise highly decorated gowns did not lend themselves to further adornment.

As a result, most, like Kelly Clarkson and Miley Cyrus, ended up carrying their roses in their hands. Ms. Cabello, the young Cuban-American singer whose affecting speech about Dreamers and her own history, made after Kesha’s appearance, was another powerful moment, attached hers to her handbag. And they seem to have largely disappeared by the time the women entered the auditorium. Presumably, there were a lot of dead flowers left behind, which is probably not exactly the symbol the organizers were going for.

The Golden Globe Awards, with its surprisingly effective call for the women attending to wear all black in support of Time’s Up, not only raised our expectations of what clothes can say on the red carpet, but created the expectation that they should be used to say something in the first place.