As American journalist E. Jean Carroll walked into a Manhattan courtroom for her civil trial against Donald Trump on April 25, 2023, she was dressed for a specific audience: the jury.

As detailed in her newly published memoir, Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President, her wardrobe was an intentional recreation of her mid-1990s style — right down to a bob haircut. Her outfits were a time capsule, embodying the woman she was when Trump sexually assaulted her.

This was a calculated legal tactic. Her goal, in her own blunt words in an interview with journalist Katie Couric, was to make herself more “fuckable” in the jury’s eyes. This was a direct rebuttal to Trump’s infamous dismissal of her initial accusation: “She’s not my type.”

Carroll’s stark admission highlights a judicial truth that extends far beyond her case. In high-profile trials, the courtroom is as much a stage as a forum of law. Every garment becomes evidence in the trial of public perception.

Perception and credibility

This battle over perception can be understood through French philosopher Jacques Rancière’s concept of the “distribution of the sensible,” the implicit system that determines what counts as visible or audible, who gets to speak, and whose words carry weight. In a courtroom, these very rules create a hierarchy of credibility — shaping not only what is said, but whose version of events is believed.

Despite instructions to focus solely on facts, jurors are inevitably influenced by a cascade of non-verbal cues. Every suit, dress and accessory is freighted with semiotic meaning, signalling authority, vulnerability, power — or even innocence or guilt.

Carroll understood this intimately. Where reporters framed the courtroom as a legal battleground, she referred to it as “the runway” in her memoir. She catalogues her choices with precision: “navy-blue Zara suit with ballet skirt,” “Jimmy Choo navy-blue pumps,” “chocolate-brown silk Oscar [de la Renta] dress.”

Appearance was not peripheral for Carroll, it was paramount to her testimony. “How I look is the very centre of the case,” she asserted. By embodying her past self, she made the alleged victim viscerally present, a silent yet powerful appeal to the jury’s empathy.

Performance of conformity

A sartorial, or outfit-driven, strategy also played out at the trial of five former Canadian junior hockey players in London, Ont. During the trial from April 22 to June 13, 2025, the five defendants presented a unified front through their co-ordinated grammar of slim suits and narrow ties.

The details mattered. Slim tailoring narrowed the torso and thin ties drew tidy vertical lines, muting athletic bulk to produce a controlled, less imposing silhouette.

Likely guided by their legal team, this esthetic borrowed from earlier fashion registers. The suits recall the mod style of the 1960s — a subculture popularized by The Beatles that, as British media theorist Dick Hebdige argued, used style to communicate an anti-establishment identity.

But oppositional styles rarely remain oppositional. As British fashion scholar Elizabeth Wilson pointed out, radical looks are often commodified, stripped of subversive meaning and absorbed into mainstream fashion.

In that London courtroom, the language of rebellion was repurposed as a tool for assimilation. Sharp cuts and uniform knots worked to erase hockey-rink masculinity, recoding the body as orderly, institutional and non-threatening.

Order and the yuppie

This strategy fits a long tradition: fashion conformity signals credibility and social alignment.

Its modern model is the 1980s yuppie effect: Through discreet branding, muted palettes and immaculate tailoring, the yuppie “power suit” produced authority through sameness.

Where sporting masculinity might advertise physical force, this yuppie esthetic signals status via cultural capital and managerial poise. The co-ordinated suits thus functioned as a collective cultural alibi — conformity presented as credibility.

This was not merely a plea for respectability, but a calibrated performance of what Australian sociologist R.W. Connell termed “hegemonic masculinity” — a legitimized, elite form of male power that derives its authority from status and control rather than physical aggression.

The goal was to construct an appearance of order, making allegations of violent transgression seem incongruent with the persona on display.

Inherited privilege

This strategy of wardrobe conformity stands in sharp contrast to the fashion approach taken by Luigi Mangione, accused of killing Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.

In his first court appearance on Feb. 21, 2025, he appeared in a dark green cable-knit sweater, white collared shirt, pale khakis and sockless penny loafers, as men’s fashion magazine GQ documented.

This is the esthetic of what American economist Thorstein Veblen termed “conspicuous leisure.” The sprezzatura (studied carelessness) serves as sartorial proof of a body so exempt from drudgery that it need not concern itself with mere comforts. Its elegance appears innate and effortless.

His preppy esthetic — with its old-money Ivy League polish — projected an elite status that commands automatic respect. It suggested his privilege was a guarantee of character.

The hockey players’ suits were a plea for entry. Mangione’s ensemble was a claim of birthright. One is earned; the other, inherited.

Dressing for culture wars

Mangione’s fashion narrative surged from the courtroom into America’s culture wars, turning him into a polarizing “folk hero.” This is the ultimate manifestation of Rancière’s “distribution of the sensible” in the wild: a fierce public battle over who gets to define what his image means.

The internet’s fascination with Mangione, dubbing the suspect a “hot assassin” or an online sex symbol, reveals just how his perceived credibility was deeply intertwined with desirability and rooted in class performance.

For his supporters, Mangione’s preppy elegance did not signal guilt, but became a show of esthetic resistance. He was recast not as a privileged defendant, but as a glamorous avenger taking on a reviled health insurance system.

In this final, chaotic stage of the courtroom’s visual economy, his fashion was politicized. The esthetic became an empty vessel to be filled with the public’s own fears, frustrations and ideological fantasies.

The sartorial brief

In our hyper-visual age, case after case, the courtroom is a stage where clothing does the arguing. Fashion assigns credibility, stirs sympathy and tilts the scale of belief.

Consider the outcomes: Carroll walked away with US$88.3 million; the five hockey players walked free. Mangione, draped in country-club casuals, hangs in the balance, his fate buoyed by a public captivated by his fashion spectacle.

Each in their way, through their outfits, presented silent testimony to the watching world. Riveted, the world could not look away.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Jason Wang, Toronto Metropolitan University

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Jason Wang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.