Before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was sworn into Congress as the youngest woman to ever serve in the legislature, she was already expounding the values of savings. “There is so much pressure to present yourself to the world in a certain way, and sometimes that means looking a lot more precious than you can afford in an instant,” she told ELLE.com in December 2018. “I’m a shopping queen,” she added, sharing that she also started using Rent the Runway after her friend offered a subscription. (In 2019, The Washington Post reported that the women of Capitol Hill were using the service, which allows you to rent work clothes and other clothing, so much so that nearby mail rooms were filled to the brim with garment bags RTR.)
In the two years since that interview, Ocasio-Cortez’s clothes have become a constant source of discussion, both for his haters and his supporters. And save on the Hill? It is only getting more popular.
Last Tuesday, MP-elect Cori Bush made headlines by tweeting: “Being an ordinary person going to Congress is really expensive to buy the business clothes I need for the Hill. . So I’m going to do thrift stores tomorrow. At the time, Bush was preparing to orient himself for the 117th Congress freshman class; she had recently been elected Missouri’s first black congressman.
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Very quickly, his tweet went viral. His message was clear: Traditionally, American politics have been a place for the very rich, and even more traditionally, for the very rich. (It has been reported that the majority of members of the current 116th Congress are millionaires.) There are additional hurdles for officials like Bush, or as she puts it, “ordinary people,” and the price tag on the dress code. is another product. unbalanced playing field.
But the response to Bush’s statement proved something else: These demographics are slowly changing. The progressive congressional women’s group known as The Squad, which will welcome Bush to their cohort in January, was quick to share its own economics secrets: Representative Ilhan Omar responded to her tweet, writing that “the savings is the way to go ”and specializes in“ outfits $ 50 or less ”. She even offered to take a headscarf from a Somali store in her neighborhood for Bush to wear. Rep. Rashida Tlaib wrote that she always wears “some of my maternity clothes under these blazers”, adding that she receives the most compliments from her finds in thrift stores. Ocasio-Cortez also stepped in, writing about his “save, hire, and patience” strategy for building a congressional wardrobe. It was a welcome gesture, but also a signal for other working class women who were one day seeking elected office: you are here too.
And businesses have taken notice as well. thredUP, a popular online thrift store, launched The Hill Thrift Box just days after Bush’s tweet, inspired by her and Ocasio-Cortez. When you order the new box, thredUP will send you a custom styled box filled with workwear items, essentially a used Stitch Fix. The company said, “For every thrifty outfit on the Hill, we’ll save 35 pounds of carbon.” Erin Wallace, the company’s vice president of integrated marketing, told ELLE.com by email that the popular tweet made them realize that “these executives have a problem to solve: a new job, a new dress code.” She said, “It’s amazing to see women having frank discussions about saving as a way to spin their wardrobes without wasting waste.
