NEW YORK - In terms of personality and policy, Ms Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are starkly contrasting figures. Yet they have often had one thing in common: a silhouette that features powerfully padded shoulders.

       For 150 years, the size of a suit jacket’s shoulder pad – which exists today as a small, simple, triangular shaped piece of material stuffed with wadding – has fluctuated in response to fashion trends. But in 2024’s US presidential election, the power shoulder has become a potent, multifaceted symbol.

       The complex history of the power shoulder means it can convey confidence, power and authority. But it can also conjure swagger, playful subversion and an outsider’s defiance of an established order.

       For both candidates, this strong silhouette offers the opportunity to shape a defining image: for Trump, as a billionaire who positions himself as anti-establishment; for Ms Harris, as a formidable figure who more than belongs in a realm once reserved for men.

       That may seem like a lot of meaning to put on a pair of shoulder pads – but the power shoulder can bear it.

       The semiotics of a square shoulder as a powerful silhouette has its roots in utilitarian clothing. Military uniforms have long used epaulets as a way to communicate rank. In Britain, tailoring houses such as H. Huntsman & Sons and Gieves & Hawkes stuffed their equestrian, hunting and military attire with thick shoulder pads designed to soften with wear. In 1912, King George V appointed Gieves & Hawkes to make the square-shouldered uniforms for the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms, the bodyguard of the monarchy.

       In the late 1800s in the United States, college football players began wearing protective gear across their shoulders, which lent an imposing square-shouldered look.

       As a visual statement, the square shoulder as a projection of strength and power spread across borders and social classes. In the 1956 film The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit, actor Gregory Peck starred as a company man struggling with the conformity of a white-collar life. Men of his character’s social class would have typically worn the soft-shouldered tailoring made popular by Brooks Brothers – a look associated with Wasp (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) morality. But Peck’s suit for the film was cut for him by H. Huntsman & Sons, whose generous use of shoulder pads build up and broaden the shoulder line, lending Peck a square-shouldered look.

       While this silhouette did not supplant the soft-shouldered Brooks Brothers style, it suggested a possible alternative for corporate America. The padded shoulder was also accruing different connotations, including ones that made it a useful tool for creating more imposing, larger-than-life figures.

       Actress Joan Crawford, in the 1945 film Mildred Pierce, was known for wearing heavily padded shoulders, a look created for her by the renowned couturier Gilbert Adrian, known as Adrian. This angular silhouette gave her a commanding presence despite a diminutive stature, enabling her to visually inhabit roles such as Pierce, an ambitious and powerful woman who refuses to be subservient to men.

       In the 1930s and 1940s, racial and ethnic minorities, particularly young black and Latino men, adopted an oversized silhouette known as the zoot suit, featuring thick pads to keep the ends of the shoulders from collapsing. For some, the zoot suit represented ebullience and rebellion. But to others, especially in white middle-class America, this look appeared unseemly and sinister – an attitude that culminated in violence in the Zoot Suit Riots in 1943 in Los Angeles, in which zoot suit-wearing men were targeted and viciously attacked by racist mobs.

       In the 1970s, tailors Tommy Nutter and Edward Sexton, working under the label Nutters of Savile Row, used the subversive power of the padded shoulder to turn traditional men’s tailoring on its head. Nutters incorporated an extreme padded shoulder into tailoring for rock royalty such as The Beatles and Mick Jagger. The structured silhouette came to further invoke countercultural sexiness and cool.

       These two contrasting meanings of the power shoulder – strength, tradition and masculinity, but also exuberance and swagger – came together in the shoulder pad’s undisputed heyday: the 1980s.

       Brazen finance types – both personified in and inspired by Michael Douglas’ character, Gordon Gekko, in the 1987 film Wall Street – adopted a strongly structured shoulder as part of a new power-broker uniform. Combined with a flashy power tie and a contrast banker collar, thick shoulder pads symbolised the “greed is good” ethos and the bravado of a new tycoon class.

       The look was not limited to men. Shoulder pads in the 1980s took on the dimensions of aircraft carriers, exemplifying the excesses of the decade. For both men and women, these cartoonishly angular silhouettes offered a sharp contrast to the soft-shouldered look associated with establishment elites and old-money power – figures who publicly valued modesty and humility, such as writer George Plimpton or former US president George H.W. Bush.

       The 1980s was, of course, the decade that gave rise to the showboating mogul Donald Trump – and his personal uniform has remained anchored in this era ever since. Today, Trump’s square-shouldered suits serve as a central part of his presentation as an unapologetic outsider, waging war on an entrenched elite. When he vows to “drain the swamp”, he’s talking, in part, about ridding Washington of its Brooks Brothers bureaucrats.

       When Trump was on trial on 34 felony counts in Manhattan, many high-profile supporters showed up in solidarity wearing similar attire: worsted suits heavily padded across the top and paired with white shirts and bright red satin ties, a uniform look that signals loyalty to him.

       Ms Harris’ 2024 campaign attire is also rooted in social changes evident in the 1980s. As more women entered the work force and rose to new heights in the corporate world, many adopted visible shoulder pads to signal dependability and professionalism.

       In Working Girl, a 1988 film about a working-class woman’s ascent in business, the actress Melanie Griffith came armoured in a powerfully padded suit. The power shoulder creates what has long been read as a masculine silhouette, so for women entering sectors from which they have been historically excluded, this distinct look offers a ready professional uniform.

       For the most important night of her political life, Vice-President Harris accepted her party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention in a navy Chloe power suit, with shoulder pads that built up and broadened her shoulder line, giving her a sharper, more angular silhouette. It is a look she has sported often since her days as California attorney-general – buttoned-up and assertive, yet recalling a stylish outsider’s aesthetic – while not making so much of a fashion statement that the focus shifts from her message to her clothes.

       On Election Day, Trump may be sent back to the White House clad once again in padded shoulders that represent a long history of sport, war and business, as well as another era’s idea of swaggering masculinity. Or Ms Harris may prevail and smash through the last American glass ceiling, garbed in a storied silhouette that evokes political tradition as well as a history of ebullience – and is also a nod to the female trailblazers who have used a shoulder pad to command the respect they deserve. NYTIMES