This would of course be neither the first nor the last time that Clinton’s femininity would, via her clothing, chafe against her political and professional ambitions. But it would be one of the last times that Clinton would be “tentative” about her style. The Democratic Party’s new presidential nominee has, instead, settled on a sartorial formula that many of her fellow women politicians, from Angela Merkel to Theresa May to Sarah Palin to Claire McCaskill, have relied on, as well: a simple jacket and a matching pant, over a basic—and usually pointedly high-necked—shell. The pantsuit. The uniform that claims to care more about substance than style, and that fights against longstanding cultural assumptions that women politicians can fairly be judged according to their clothing. The pantsuit is, for the trailblazing woman leader, an empowering paradox: It’s a statement outfit that makes its statement by saying as little as possible.

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Here is a true fact: It wasn’t until 1993 (1993!) that women were allowed (allowed!) to wear pantsuits on the Senate floor. The “allowing” occurred, in the end, only because Barbara Mikulski and Carol Moseley Braun decided to defy an arcane rule, leading, eventually, to its erasure. (Or to its modification: Pants-clad women are now allowed in the Senate chamber so long as the pants in question are accompanied by a jacket.) The rebellion was fitting: Pants are, in their way, political. Women started wearing them in the U.S. around the same time that they won the vote, and the garments reflected their egalitarian ambition. And suits are symbolic from the other side of the spectrum: They are the ultimate totems of cheerful corporate conformity. They whiff of willful captivity.

Over the near-decade since Cleavagegate, Clinton’s pantsuits have evolved from a default uniform—easy, unsurprising, strategically dull—into something more transcendent, something vaguely suggestive of the earliest meanings of the woman-in-pants: She’s taken the article of clothing whose whole point is conformity and made it her unique brand. Clinton lists “pantsuit aficionado,” tongue firmly in cheek and leg firmly in slack, on her Twitter bio. When she joined Instagram in June of 2015, her first post was a picture of red, white, and blue suit jackets on hangers—captioned “Hard choices.” Her campaign’s merch store sells an “Everyday Pantsuit Tee,” the garment emblazoned with silk-screened lapels and a logo-ed brooch, for $30. Last year, Clinton appeared on The Ellen Degeneres Show with a 5-year-old fan who wore an adorably miniaturized version of one of her iconic blue suits. She has made, through the years, many, many jokes about pantsuits.

For Clinton, the pantsuit represents a fusion between the symbolic extremes of the suit that’s worn by a woman: On her—by her, for her—the garment suggests neither freedom nor conformity, but instead … a kind of capitulation. It takes the lessons of Cleavagegate, and of all the other times Clinton’s clothing choices have collided with a media that is not quite sure what to make of her, and buttons them up in a sensible, cleanly cut jacket. Clinton’s pantsuit reassures. It is simultaneously defiant and conciliatory. It is confident without being flashy. It says both “I am a woman” and “I am so much more than just a woman.”