I respect that. I think it’s a pretty good example of her ability to take the temperature of the times and figure out how to solve the problem presented to her, a useful attribute in a president. But at the same time, I can’t help being a little sorry about it. Because in sapping her clothes of potentially controversial content, Mrs. Clinton has also sapped them of personality.

Yes, she does not look like a fruit basket anymore. And maybe she was really a black suit type all along. But whereas the quirkiness of her rainbow-clothing coalition gave humor to her policy-wonkitude, her clothes now say she will do what’s necessary to get the job (i.e., getting elected) done. Fair enough. But they say nothing about her tastes, her sense of humor, her idiosyncrasies. They do not humanize her. They do not suggest multiple dimensions.

Invert the clothing equation and it becomes a weapon you can use, as opposed to one used on you. And a pretty powerful one, especially for a woman.

Mrs. Clinton seemed to understand this at the beginning of her campaign, with her Instagram joke about “hard choices” accompanying a red, white and blue pantsuit array, with her asides about dyeing her hair, even with her scrunchies, once upon a State Department time. She seemed to see fashion and our obsession with what our role models wear as opportunity and tool, or at least to have come round to that view, after carping early on about unfair gender-related focus.