The Clothes on the Campaign Trail

Back in 2007 and 2008, as a 27-year-old rookie campaign trail reporter for the Wall Street Journal, I crisscrossed the country covering the presidential bids of then-Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain. At quieter moments in the news cycle, I was able to return to my Washington, D.C. apartment. But for the better part of 14 months I lived out of a carry-on suitcase. 

My style strategy (if you could even call it that) was to pack as much black clothing as possible, reasoning that at least everything would match. Looking back, a few key pieces served as pick-me-ups, boosting my confidence and morale in the midst of a relentless news cycle. Covering a campaign is a logistical circus and a mental marathon, with never enough sleep and too many plastic-wrapped turkey sandwiches eaten en route to the next stop. Reporters are at the mercy of the candidate’s schedule and answering to editors making demands from afar. Putting on a pair of knee-high boots, with a pointy toe and just enough of a heel, helped me stand taller as I boarded the bus each morning. The same was true for my red belted trench coat, especially when I popped the collar.

I was reminiscing about the grind recently with journalist-turned-television creator Amy Chozick. We were on the trail together for the Journal in 2008, with Chozick covering first Hillary Clinton, later Barack Obama. She went back out in 2016, spending a second cycle with Clinton while writing for the New York Times.  

Chozick is someone I’ve always known to be interested in fashion (I remember querying her about her flats in a news meeting; she was early on the Tory Burch train). But I only just realized how much shopping she snuck in during the trail. One perk of the assignment, she reminded me in a recent chat, is that reporters don’t spend much of their own money. Every meal is paid for, every hotel is covered. “If Obama had a day off in Chicago, I would go to Neiman Marcus,” Chozick said. She picked up a pair of Ferragamo flats, a sparkly Marc Jacobs cardigan, and an oversized red and black Isabel Marant jacket. “This was a splurge,” she said, pulling up a picture of the coat on her phone. Worth it, she was quick to add, because it checked so many boxes: warm enough for the frigid primary season, big enough to wear over anything, and in a buffalo check pattern that had universal appeal. “It reads Iowa, it reads New York,” Chozick said of the jacket she still wears today. “You need a wardrobe that can span the red and blue states.”

Chozick wanted that sensibility in her new show, The Girls on the Bus. The drama, inspired by her best-selling book, Chasing Hillary, follows four fictional reporters from different corners of the media on an imagined campaign trail. When Chozick interviewed costume designers for the project, the pitches mirrored the current political landscape — prone to extremes.

One camp felt that the women at the heart of the story would be married to their jobs and clothes would be an afterthought. “That hurt my soul,” said Chozick, who had higher style hopes for her debut project. Others imagined something fantastically fashion-forward in the vein of Sex and the City or Emily in Paris; one proposal included a collection of “wild hats” for each of the women, according to Chozick. “I would have loved to have a Carrie Bradshaw closet on our show,” she said. “But is she schlepping that to the swing states?”

The Girls on the Bus, streaming now on HBO’s Max, strikes the elusive moderate middle ground—at least in terms of fashion. Costume designers Claire and Lily Parkinson were on board with Chozick’s vision for clothing that was both aspirational and authentic. “We definitely talked a lot about the suitcase and how much they could bring,” Claire said on a recent Zoom. The sister duo also pored over the script to determine when in the story a character might stop at home and be able to swap out her clothes. And they bucked the usual costuming strategy of more-is-more, instead putting together capsule wardrobes for each woman to restyle and rewear. “It’s very rare to even repeat a pair of shoes on some shows,” said Claire Parkinson. 

The show focuses on Sadie McCarthy, a scrappy, ambitious rising star at the New York Sentinel (modeled after the New York Times) played by Melissa Benoist. Her style romanticizes a bygone era of Hunter S. Thompson, inspired by the likes of Jane Birkin, Diane Keaton’s Annie Hall, and Alexa Chung. Vests and jeans worked as a foundation for Sadie’s look, with a fedora and aviator sunglasses layered on top.

A vintage Isabel Marant coat—a nod to Chozick's jacket—worn throughout the season ended up “feeling like an anchor,” Benoist told me on a recent call. The same was true for a three-piece Kallmeyer suit and a Coach over-the-shoulder tote from the 2000s sourced from the RealReal. Stuffed with chargers, a notepad, a laptop, and an assortment of candy wrappers, “that bag was 25 pounds!” Benoist said, laughing. “And if it felt any less than that, it wasn’t right. It needed to be something I had to lug around.” Knits, twills, and tweeds offered textured and ease—of wearing and packing. “Honestly, you can put corduroy in your suitcase and it's going to be fine,” Lily Parkinson said. Vintage t-shirts proved versatile, too, worn by Sadie to sleep in one night and under a blazer the next morning. 

Grace Gordon Greene, played by Carla Gugino, is the seasoned, scoop-generating trail veteran at a competing newspaper — and she wouldn’t dare sleep in a T-shirt. In her suitcase, carefully packed alongside tailored trousers, turtlenecks, and silk scarves, were a pair of lime green silk pajamas. “She’s on the road all the time,” said Claire Pakinson. “That’s the piece that is going to make her feel good when she’s drinking a glass of wine in her hotel room.” The pajamas and a cobalt blue coat offered pops of color in Grace’s otherwise Parisian-chic palette of black, navy, gray, and tan.

Natasha Behnam as influencer Lola Rahaii is rendered in technicolor, representing a new era of content creators covering news on their own social media channels. Resplendent in crop tops, matching sets, and a bucket hat, the phone-wielding Lola is learning on the job (she shows up for pool reporting duty, where a small press pack follows the candidate, in a fluorescent bikini). The Parkinson sisters said they were particularly aware of what labels Lola wears, knowing the character would want to represent LGBTQ+ designers with the occasional freebie or spon-con piece in the mix, too.

Christina Elmore steps into the stilettos of Kimberlyn Kendrick, who is quickly climbing the ranks at the Fox-esque Liberty Direct News. Knowing her character was there as the conservative counterpoint covering Democratic candidates, Elmore sought to dress the part during the audition process. Before a chemistry read, she went to Marshalls and bought a form-fitting, above-the-knee fuschia dress in a stretchy fabric with a ruffle sleeve. “I had huge lashes on,” Elmore said. “I was giving full Fox.”

Once she landed the part, she was thrilled to hear that the Parkinson sisters wanted a bit more nuance in the look. Rather than snug shift dresses, Kimberlyn favors power pantsuits in saturated shades. Her silhouettes vary, going from double-breasted in one episode to a wider leg in another. “It does hint at the fish-out-of-water feeling that she has on the bus and at her own outlet,” Elmore said when we talked. “As a Black conservative woman from the south, she’s not exactly sure if she fits in any of these worlds, and you can see that in her fashion choices.” Kimberlyn had the biggest suitcase on the bus, a large Away bag in bubblegum pink. That meant she could have a few more coats in her rotation, too. 

Chozick served as a touchpoint for the women, and the show’s writers, about the realities of life on the trail. While writing one scene, the team wanted Sadie to head down to the hotel bar in her pajamas; Chozick suggested the character put on a blazer first. The writers burst out laughing, asking if Chozick thought it made her more professional. “I don’t know!” Chozick said. “But whenever I left my hotel room at a weird hour in my pajamas, I put a blazer over it.”

Chozick’s styling tip prevailed. “I put a blazer over,” Benoist said, “and that’s when I run into the candidate of my dreams in the elevator.” That candidate is Felicity Walker, the primary frontrunner played by Hettiene Park who makes her own style statement. This is Felicity’s second bid for the White House, having failed—unexpectedly and spectacularly—the cycle before. Her story is familiar but her style is anything but, favoring fabrics with movement, like knits and dresses with flowy sleeves.

“I did not want her to dress like Hillary,” Chozick said, laying to rest “the tyranny of the pantsuit.” She pauses, then adds: “Which, by the way, women are only wearing because they think it emulates men."

That playing-the-game side of politics was eye-opening to Benoist. During filming, Benoist talked with Chozick about their shared longing for political figures to show more of their human side, rather than the political one that can often feel calculated or out of touch. The Girls on the Bus, with its slightly softer style, Benoist hopes, leads by example: “We don’t have to adhere to these strange rules of what a woman in power has to look or dress like.” That sentiment has my vote, too.

New episodes of The Girls on the Bus drop weekly on Thursdays on HBO Max.