I just came back from a Maymester in Washington, D.C., where I spent 10 days with the most incredible people, meeting with some of the top companies in the world. On one of our days off, I took the opportunity to go to some museums.

I walked to the modern art museum at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and walked through the paintings and sculptures. I thought I had found my favorite piece of the day, “Pledge” by Hank Willis Thomas, which was a pale gray vinyl print with the American flag. The catch, though, was that if you shined a flashlight on the piece, the faces of young boys holding the flag would appear.

Instead, I came to realize that Carrie Mae Weems’ work, titled “Lincoln, Lonnie, and Me — A Story in 5 Parts,” was my favorite. I’ll come back to it in a second because the reasoning behind its etched place in my heart lies in a third piece, Nick Cave’s 2009 mixed media piece, “Soundsuit.”

Made in response to the beating of Rodney King, it poses as a large figure with a pointed top made from doilies, sequined fabric, beading and delicate embroidery with fabric boots. In the card description, it explains that these soundsuits serve as “protective shields that [mask] a person’s identity and [scramble] notions of race, class, and gender.” And, by further using items from thrift stores and giving them a second life, Cave asks how we consider and treat our items in life, specifically with how they “are devalued, discarded, and [how we] bring a different kind of relevancy to them.”

It made me think about clothes as a form of protest. Of course, there are more direct forms of protest, such as statements on shirts or wearing specific garments, but in this case, it made me consider how fashion can be used as a way to understand the root of the protest or historical event.

Cave’s piece was a way to represent the complex feelings of the horrible death of Rodney King and its historical aftermath. In addition, it was a way to spark a conversation on classification, intentionality and introspection.

So, how does this relate to Weems’ piece? In the video, there was a red curtain slightly drawn back, and as different video segments played, characters came in and out of the gap, talking, singing, dancing or what have you. The portion that hooked me started with a woman looking at herself in a mirror and flashes of womanhood coming in and out, from a young girl playing to an older woman putting on a Playboy bunny costume and posing.

Almost like the reverse of Cave’s soundsuit, a more deliberate discussion and protest of women, our place and power in the world, as we saw the life of the woman fall into stereotypes of sexualization and objectification, Urge Overkill’s cover of the Neil Diamond song “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” played, haunting with its lyrics of “Please, come take my hand / Girl, you’ll be a woman soon / Soon, you’ll need a man.”

This same way of channeling art as a creative outlet to understand complex situations and feelings is seen on the runway, too, especially with designers dealing with grief. Think Donatella Versace’s first collection for the Versace label in Milan in 1997 after the murder of her brother, Gianni Versace. Sarah Burton’s first collection as the creative director for Alexander McQueen after McQueen’s death, touching on topics of our connection to nature, tenderness and life and death. Even Louis Vuitton’s honorary collection for Virgil Abloh after his unexpected death in 2021.

And, just as fashion activism can be obvious, like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s “TAX THE RICH” Met Gala dress, we even see fashion become a form of remediation. One of my favorite earrings comes from ARTICLE22, a company that makes jewelry from bombs from the Vietnam War, originally brought back to donate the proceeds, but now as a way to raise awareness and turn something as horrible as bomb shells into something beautiful with a story and a purpose behind it.

I talk a lot about how fashion can represent ourselves, our feelings and our view of the world. Although I’ve never blatantly stated it, our style evolution is also a means of tracking how we grow as individuals as we process all the obstacles of life, from love and heartbreak to death and new beginnings.

Political activism is critical, and so are our individual voices. People have to understand, process and act on their own time, so whatever you feel strongly about, an action still counts as such, and anyone who says you are too much or too little can feel that way otherwise. Whether it’s on your favorite bakery shutting down or the geopolitical landscape, I encourage you to do what you can.

Whether it’s standing up, speaking up or dressing up, I see you — and your killer outfit, too.

Hadyn Phillips is a rising senior writing about fashion in the 21st century, spotlighting new trends and popular controversy in her column, “That’s Fashion, Sweetie.”