The Political Importance of a Well-Fitting Jacket: Fashion, Visibility, and Women’s Well-Being

Tuesday, April 28, 2026. This is for Marly.

The Political Importance of a Well-Fitting Jacket

There is a vulgar superstition that intelligent women are not supposed to care about clothes.

This superstition survives despite mountains of contradictory evidence, including all of civilization.

People say clothing is superficial in the same way people say architecture is just shelter, or dinner parties are just calories.

These are remarks made by folks who have either never been alive in public or have hired someone to dress them.

A new study by Jekaterina Rogaten and Viviana Rullo suggests something women have known without academic permission for decades:

finding clothing that fits your age, body, and sense of self is linked to psychological well-being. Women who felt satisfied with their clothing options reported greater well-being and less social avoidance.

One wants to say: stop the presses. A shimmering, pristine cardigan may be preventing despair.

And yet something in the findings feels quietly radical.

Because the researchers are not really talking about blouses.

They are talking about social existence.

When the Marketplace Stops Imagining You

One of the more comic brutalities of modern consumer culture is the way it worships women while erasing older ones.

At some point, many women discover retail has arranged two costumes for them:

Sexy adolescent refugee.

Or retired headmistress at a damp cathedral school.

There appears, oddly, to be very little in between.

Participants in the study complained precisely of this—clothing either too young, too matronly, too badly cut for bodies altered by childbirth, menopause, gravity, and the passage of time, which remains one of history’s less charming inventions.

And here is where the research gets psychologically interesting.

Poor clothing fit did not simply irritate.

It predicted withdrawal.

Women skipped social occasions.

Avoided being seen.

Shrank.

That is not fashion commentary.

That is attachment and belonging.

Let’s recall that there’s an old sociological insight associated with Erving Goffman that public life is theatrical.

We present ourselves through symbols, rituals, surfaces.

Clothing is one of those surfaces.

Damage it, and you can damage participation itself.

That is a much larger claim than shopping satisfaction.

Also, incidentally, one reason fitting-room mirrors should be tried at The Hague.

The Secret Seriousness of Vanity

Vanity is often what patriarchy calls a woman’s effort at dignity.

There, I said it.

The study invokes enclothed cognition—the idea that what we wear shapes cognition and behavior.

We already know this, though academia insists on rediscovering what tailors understood centuries ago.

Put a man in a bespoke suit and people call it authority.

Put a woman in a jacket that restores proportion after menopause and suddenly we are discussing narcissism.

It is ridiculous.

And revealing.

Because admiration—being seen favorably—is not a trivial appetite.

It may be closer to oxygen.

I have argued elsewhere that many couples do not fail from lack of love but from admiration starvation—a chronic famine of appreciative noticing.

This study sits quietly adjacent to that idea.

Clothing, after all, can be one medium through which admiration circulates.

Or disappears.

A husband saying, almost absentmindedly, “That looks beautiful on you,” has probably prevented more sorrow than several schools of couples theory.

Not every intervention requires a workbook.

Sometimes it requires Merino wool.

The Loneliness Hidden in the Fitting Room

The most fascinating finding was that aging anxiety did not explain the effect.

Read that twice.

The injury was not simply women feeling bad about aging.

It was something subtler:

A world failing to offer them forms in which to appear.

That edges toward recognition theory.

To be recognized is a human need.

Sometimes recognition arrives dressed in good wool.

And the absence of it can feel like exile.

This may explain why participants spoke not merely of poor selection but invisibility.

Invisible.

What a devastating word to use in a shopping survey.

That should stop you.

Though if you have ever been ignored by a sales associate while standing beside a twenty-three-year-old influencer in a crop top, perhaps it won’t.

Menopause, Tailoring, and the Collapse of Universal Sizing

I’ve been told that there is something almost metaphysical in the modern sizing system.

It pretends a body can simply be enlarged mathematically.

As if one could take the proportions of a nineteen-year-old and just scale them up like municipal blueprints.

Women in the study objected—sensibly—that bodies do not age by spreadsheet.

Waists shift.

Bust lines change.

Hips renegotiate treaties.

And standard sizing behaves as though none of this has occurred.

I would note this is typical of bureaucracies.

Reality enters.

The form does not change.

The citizen is blamed.

Fast Fashion and the Moral Revolt of Midlife

Another thing I loved:

These women did not merely want flattering clothes.

They wanted well-made ones.

Natural fabrics.

Durability.

Comfort.

In other words, they were staging a rebellion against disposable aesthetics.

Very middle-aged.

Very sane.

And perhaps faintly monastic.

One begins by wanting linen that breathes.

One ends by rejecting late capitalism.

This is how spiritual awakenings sometimes occur.

I have long suspected half of moral philosophy began when someone contemplated polyester.

A Brief Note on Neurodiverse Partnerships

Permit me a brief detour.

In mixed neurotype relationships, clothing often carries meanings couples do not discuss.

For one partner, dress may communicate courtship, play, erotic signaling.

For another, clothing may be primarily sensory management.

Comfort.

Texture.

Predictability.

Neither is wrong.

But misunderstandings flourish.

What one partner experiences as “You’ve stopped presenting yourself to me,” the other may experience as “I am trying not to crawl out of my skin.”

That is not indifference.

That is an interpretive gap.

It matters.

And no, the solution is not matching linen jumpsuits.

Usually.

What This Has To Do With Marriage

More than first appears.

Long partnerships often suffer not from hostility but aesthetic neglect.

People stop adorning themselves for one another.

Stop surprising one another visually.

Stop participating in what might be called erotic citizenship.

A phrase guaranteed never to appear in a peer-reviewed journal.

But perhaps it should.

Because being well dressed is sometimes not performance.

It is an offering.

A way of saying:

I still wish to appear before you.

There is devotion in that.

Also effort.

And effort is one of love’s least celebrated dialects.

The Real Problem

The problem is not that women over fifty cannot find decent jackets.

The problem is that American culture has confused youth with visibility.

And confused comfort with surrender.

And confused mature elegance with disappearance.

That sounds right.

The comedy is that an industry ignoring one of the wealthiest consumer groups in existence now requires academic researchers to tell it there may be money in respecting women.

Civilization somehow continues.

Though barely.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can clothing really affect mental health?

In limited but meaningful ways, yes.

Clothing is unlikely to determine mental health in the way trauma, attachment injuries, poverty, or depression can.

But research on enclothed cognition suggests what we wear can affect confidence, self-perception, and behavior.

The newer research discussed here suggests satisfaction with clothing options may also influence social participation—particularly whether someone withdraws or continues to show up in public life.

That is not trivial. Social participation is one of the quiet engines of well-being.

Or, less academically: sometimes the right jacket gets you out the door.

What is “fashion satisfaction”?

Fashion satisfaction refers to how well available clothing allows a person to feel appropriately represented—stylistically, socially, and physically.

Notice this is not identical to liking fashion.

It is about whether the marketplace offers you forms in which you can plausibly appear as yourself.

That is a much bigger question.

Is caring about clothing just vanity?

Only if we use vanity so broadly it swallows dignity.

There is a difference between compulsive appearance preoccupation and ordinary self-presentation.

Wanting clothing that fits your body, age, profession, or identity may be less about narcissism than coherence.

Most folks do not dress merely to be admired.

They dress to feel recognizable.

What is enclothed cognition?

Enclothed Cognition refers to research suggesting clothing can shape thought and performance partly through symbolism.

Put differently: what you wear can subtly influence how you carry yourself, concentrate, or feel.

The classic example involved participants wearing a lab coat associated with attentiveness.

A phrase like the psychology of a good coat may sound comic.

Unfortunately, it may also be true.

Why might clothing matter more in midlife?

Midlife often involves identity renegotiation.

Bodies change.

Roles change.

Visibility changes.

For many women, the question becomes less “How attractive am I?” and more “How do I want to appear now?”

That is not decline.

That is developmental complexity.

And it deserves better retail options than sequined peasant blouses.

Can dissatisfaction with clothing contribute to social withdrawal?

It may.

The study that prompted this article found social avoidance partly explained the link between clothing satisfaction and well-being.

That matters.

When people stop attending gatherings, dating, work events, or even ordinary dinners because they feel ill-at-ease in their own presentation, the consequences can accumulate.

Loneliness rarely begins as loneliness.

It often begins as staying home.

Is this only an issue for women?

No, though women often encounter it under sharper cultural pressure.

Men, as a rule, have much quieter versions:

The aging body no longer fitting one’s old identity.

Status anxiety expressed through clothing.

Feeling invisible after retirement.

The panic some men experience around casual pants, which deserves its own literature.

These dynamics are human, even when gendered.

What does any of this have to do with marriage?

More than appears.

Long-term relationships often lose forms of mutual aesthetic attention.

Partners stop noticing one another.

Stop adorning for one another.

Stop offering visual surprise.

That may sound minor until you realize admiration often moves through these small rituals.

Sometimes getting dressed is not self-expression.

Sometimes it is courtship.

Even after twenty years.

Especially after twenty years.

Does this relate to neurodiverse couples?

It can.

In mixed neurotype partnerships, clothing may hold different meanings.

For one partner: beauty, seduction, symbolic effort.

For another: sensory comfort, predictability, regulation.

Those differences can easily be misread as indifference or criticism.

Often they are neither.

They are interpretive gaps.

And those are bridgeable.

Can a good jacket improve mental health?

By itself?

No.

Let us remain civilized.

But if it helps someone feel more at ease in their body, attend the dinner, accept the invitation, flirt with life again—

then yes, in a modest and deeply human way, perhaps it can help.

And modest help is often underrated.

Is the larger point really about clothes?

Not really.

It is about recognition.

Belonging.

Visibility.

And whether a culture still makes room for people to appear with dignity as they age.

The jacket is simply where the argument put on shoes.

Final Thoughts

The vulgar reading of this study is that clothes make women happy.

The deeper reading is that social recognition sustains well-being, and clothing is one neglected vehicle through which recognition moves.

That feels truer.

And much bigger.

A well-fitting jacket may not save civilization.

Though one should never underestimate the power of cashmere.

But it may help someone go out to dinner who otherwise would have stayed home.

And if you understand anything about loneliness, you know that is not a small thing.

It may be everything.

In other words, never trust a culture that dismisses the psychology of a good coat.

It probably has bad lighting too.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Rogaten, J., & Rullo, V. (2026). Invisible Women: The Relationship Between Satisfaction with Fashion Clothing Choices and Well-being in Middle-aged Women. Journal of Macromarketing.
(Use full volume/issue once you have it.)

Hajo Adam, & Adam D. Galinsky. (2012). Enclothed cognition. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(4), 918–925.

Erving Goffman. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor.

Axel Honneth. (1995). The Struggle for Recognition. MIT Press.