Dress Like A Woman: Working Women and What They Wore, Roxanne Gay & Vanessa Friedman

Description

Dress Like a Woman: Working Women and What They Wore
by Abrams Books (Author) | Foreword by Roxane Gay | Introduction by Vanessa Friedman | Hardcover

From assembly lines to courtrooms, from military bases to the Oval Office, Dress Like a Woman is a striking visual history of how women have shaped—and reshaped—the meaning of professional identity through what they wear.

Featuring more than 300 stunning photographs, this volume documents a century of women at work, revealing the evolution of power, purpose, and presentation across classes, cultures, and careers. From pilots and activists to artists and scientists, the women captured here reflect both the diversity of women’s labor and the resilience of their self-expression.

With essays by feminist writer Roxane Gay and fashion critic Vanessa Friedman, the book examines how clothing has been used to navigate expectations, resist conformity, and define one’s own authority. Familiar figures like Amelia Earhart, Angela Davis, and Michelle Obama appear alongside portraits of everyday workers—each image a testament to how dress becomes a form of resistance, creativity, and liberation.

A celebration of strength, individuality, and change, Dress Like a Woman is as much about identity and agency as it is about fashion—an inspiring chronicle of what it means to show up, stand tall, and wear your work with pride.