(NEXSTAR) — Inauguration Day took its place in history with several influential women wearing purple to mark its significance.
Newly sworn-in Vice President Kamala Harris, former first lady Michelle Obama, former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Elizabeth Warren wore the color of bipartisanship.
Made up of a mix of red (Republican) and blue (Democrat), the hue was represented as Harris and President-elect Joe Biden officially took their oaths of office Wednesday in Washington, D.C.
The color, along with gold and white, also represents the suffragette movement.
“Purple is the color of loyalty, constancy to purpose, unswerving steadfastness to a cause. White, the emblem of purity, symbolizes the quality of our purpose; and gold, the color of light and life, is as the torch that guides our purpose, pure and unswerving,” according to a newsletter from the National Woman’s Party in the United States on Dec. 6, 1913.
Harris, the first Black and south Asian woman to become vice president, wore designs by Black designers Christopher John Rogers and Sergio Hudson that included a violet jacket paired with her signature pearl necklace — an ode to her Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority — and purple gloves.
Obama’s outfit, reportedly also by Hudson, featured a magenta-colored jacket with matching turtleneck sweater and wide-leg trousers.
Clinton donned the color in one of her signature pantsuits, while Warren, D-Mass., tied a lilac scarf around her neck.
On Tuesday night, incoming first lady Jill Biden wore a magenta wrap coat by Jonathan Cohen.
CNN’s Abby Phillip also noted that the color is a nod to Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress and to run for president in 1972, to whom Harris has previously paid homage.
