WHY POWERFUL WOMEN GO SLEEVELESS The arms race: why powerful women go sleeveless As some of the worlds most influential women exercise their right to bare arms, its time to ditch the sleeves and get your guns out, says Anna Murphy. For reasons unclear, earlier this summer I found myself at a dinner for Forbes Most Powerful Women International (sic). It quickly became apparent that I was the only woman there not running Something Important. And as if the one-way chat werent enough - I couldnt really hold my own on the travails of German boardroom life for a girl, to be honest - the dress code underlined it. Everyone was wearing a tailored jacket, no surprises there. But then suddenly everyone was taking off said jacket to reveal a sleeveless top and the toned upper arms of a Russian gymnast. Had I missed the signal for guns out? Was I at a dinner, or Barrys Bootcamp? This, I soon realised, was 21st-century power-dressing at its purest - a kind of arms race in which women must prove they can man up, play with the big boys, tough it out (I could go on with the metaphors) by flexing their non-metaphorical muscle, in the form of delicately popping biceps and not remotely wobbly triceps. Yes, as if the multinational-running über-frau sitting next to me didnt have enough to do, she appeared to be pumping iron, or cranking out downward dogs, on a daily basis. In the Eighties a working woman such as her could make like she was up to playing hardball in a mans world courtesy of a kind of fancy dress, aping the inverted triangle of the male torso with her shoulder-pads. Now she cant simply play dress up to look like she means business: she has to work out. The acme of the modern power professionelle are those high priestesses of Silicon Valley, Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer, and their arms are frequently laid as bare as their ambitions for global domination. Then, of course, there are the remarkable biceps of Michelle Obama. (She exercises for 90 minutes every day. No one says arms that good are easy.) The toned arm has replaced the designer handbag, observed Newsnights Emily Maitlis last week. No doubt Becky Sharp would be similarly buff if she were elbowing her way through the world today. You can drill down further into the symbolism. According to the fashion packs favourite fitness trainer, Christina Howells of thatgirllondon - who trains the editor and super-stylist Katie Grand (more on her later) - toned arms are more important than ever. It is the decline in testosterone as a woman ages that causes upper arms to soften, says Howells. Keep them hard and you are signalling that your testosterone - a hormone found naturally at higher levels in men, which encourages competitiveness, if not aggression - is a force to be reckoned with. Which is not to say that there isnt also a distinctly feminine appeal to a toned upper arm. It can have all the allure of a finely turned leg, but its power - in being less gendered, and therefore less un-PC - is less compromised in the post-Mad Men workplace. Needless to say there is a whole new mini-industry to cater for the arms race, churning out chic, sleek, powerful-looking sleeveless dresses and tunic tops for the chic, sleek, powerful-looking women who wear them. Rob Jones, of the British label Teatum Jones, recounts how a commercial strategist advised them recently that sleeveless is key: She said the women who are working hard are also working hard at their body and dont want to hide it. (A stunning rose-drenched dress by Teatum Jones is £700 at liberty.co.uk .) Other British designers producing disarmingly lovely dresses include Roksanda Ilincic and Jonathan Saunders (£938 and £690 respectively; matchesfashion ). Such is the scale of a certain sort of womans current obsession with sleeves-free that even such a contrarian item as the sleeveless jacket - as modelled by Olivia Palermo - is everywhere from French Connection to Marks & Spencer.
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 12:45:55 +0000
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