Photographed against a capital sky in a beautiful, high-rise business, Monica Lewinsky stands in an ankle-length black gown, cinched at her neck with a leather belt, and cheetah-print pump. She looks the portrait of feminine independence. Of course, people familiar with the US political landscape of the mid-1990s knows that wasn’t usually the case.
The picture is portion of a new plan Lewinsky is fronting for LA-based clothing company Revolution. Throughout, she is a willowy figure, striking energy poses in a black dark twinset or a personalized vest and connect. The selection, titled “You’ve Got the Power, ” features shirts and office-appropriate knitwear that the company hopes will inspire wearer around the world into taking municipal action.
“Prioritizing people and the planet has always been a major part of what we do. Voting is one key way to do that, ” the model explains on its site.
“Voting is using our voice to be heard and it ’s the most defining — and powerful — aspect of democracy, ” Lewinsky added in a statement. “Voting is always significant, but the stakes are particularly large this year with voter frustration and disillusionment threatening to actively effect turnout. ”
To this effect, Reformation has promised to donate 100% of the proceeds of one piece in the collection — a cream sweatshirt emblazoned with its “You’ve Got the Power ” title as a Pop Art-style slogan — to the US-based nonpartisan voter advocacy organization Vote. nonprofit. “A powerful outfit alone isn’t going to create a more perfect union, ” read a press release. “But putting it on and going to the polls is a damned good place to start. ”
In 1995, the then-21-year-old Lewinsky joined the White House as an paid summer volunteer. ( She was eventually hired to paid jobs there and at the Pentagon. ) In just a sense of years, however, her image and profession were destroyed after authorities learned of a series of physical encounters she had had with then-President Bill Clinton, leading to a national impeachment for Clinton and decades of misogyny, death threats and cultural alienation for Lewinsky. “Overnight, I went from being a completely private figure to a publicly humiliated one, ” “It was easy to forget that ‘that woman’ was dimensional, had a soul, and was once unbroken. ”
Today, Lewinsky is an avid public speaker on the topic of harassment as well as a to anti-bullying organization Bystander Revolution.
In her debut fashion campaign, Reformation’s styling seems to evoke elements of Lewinsky’s past. In one image, she’s clad in scarlet, head-to-toe; in another — one of the campaign’s only close-up shots — she wears the kind of blacked-out shades used to avoid paparazzi, as she stares ahead, impervious to the camera flash.
“You cannot run away from your narrative, ” she told last year, commemorating the 25th anniversary of the scandal. “Perhaps the most challenging idea I had to come to accept was that there is no shedding or unshackling of the self that sprang from 1998 … You can only try to integrate your previous selves with as much compassion as you can muster. ”