There are lots of ways to get your political message across: hanging a rainbow flag out your window, donning a Dump Trump T-shirt every afternoon between now and the midterm elections, or—if you are former Watergate prosecutor, legal analyst, and MSNBC contributor Jill Wine-Banks—wearing a different brooch each time you are on TV, a pin that expresses, in witty, sometimes subtle ways, your commitment to a progressive agenda.
Just a few examples from Wine-Banks’s bursting jewelry box: On August 4, she donned a goose pin—because the president’s erstwhile campaign director (now on trial for financial chicanery) Paul Manafort’s goose is cooked; on August 1, she wore a tiny ball of yellow-topped orange yarn (get it?) to signify that Donald Trump is unraveling; on July 29, Pinocchio himself made an appearance, to point out all the fibs told by the president and Rudy Giuliani. (A pants-on-fire brooch on July 27 made the same case.) And this past Monday, she rocked a burst of blue and purple stones, to signify the importance of Democrats and swing voters coming out for last night’s special elections.
“When I was first on television in May 2017, the men were all wearing flag pins,” Wine-Banks explained yesterday, reached by phone after her noon appearance on MSNBC, during which she wore a rectangular brooch that featured Lady Liberty and the word Vote.
“I had an old celluloid eagle above a shield that said ‘Defend America,’ and I thought, No one will notice it—it didn’t stand out. But someone on Twitter saw it, and I realized I was sending a message.” At the time, she says she had maybe a few hundred Twitter followers. Now, she—and her pins—have close to 10,000.
Wine-Banks began combing Etsy for things like the stoplight she wore when U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said that warnings about cyber threats “are blinking red.” She’s got a vintage Avon bauble of a Tweety-esque bird in a cage, just waiting to be unveiled when the next suspect flips and sings like a canary. And she is holding on to a handmaiden brooch, ready for the moment the Supreme Court threatens reproductive rights. Viewers now send in likely candidates—sometimes as many as a box of 10—and Wine-Banks thanks each of them with a handwritten note.
In grim times like these, Wine-Banks thinks her brooches provide a welcome respite from unrelenting bad news, a flash of sly wit on unfunny days. But Wine-Banks and her pins are looking forward to a brighter dawn: She’s got what she describes as a gorgeous blue wave, ready to dance on her lapel come November 6.
More Fashion Stories:
- Kim Kardashian West Reveals a New Yeezy Look: Spandex and Slouchy Boots—Read More
- In Belgium, Brigitte Macron and Melania Trump Are Style Opposites—Read More
- Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, Chooses Ralph Lauren for Prince Louis’s Christening—Read More
- Kourtney Kardashian Wears a Leather Tube Dress—Read More
- Nontraditional Bridesmaid Dresses for Summer—Read More
