For all the ridicule Hillary’s boxy pantsuits generate, her mannishly functional wardrobe remains the go-to choice for women on the path to power.

From The New York Times:

A woman seeking political office in 2010 faces a fashion quandary. The choice, in simplest terms, comes down to this: to follow the lead of Sarah Palin or cast a style vote with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

At a glance, Ms. Palin — she of the designer jackets, rump-hugging skirts and knee-high boots — would seem to have been a game changer, loosening up a restrictive, if unwritten, campaign dress code with one that expresses a more conventionally feminine look. Her bright, curve-enhancing garments and loose, shoulder-grazing hair — even her rimless glasses — have been taken up by a handful of candidates on the climb.

Lisa A. Kline, the image consultant behind Ms. Palin’s controversial $150,000-plus fashion makeover during the 2008 campaign, views her client’s embrace of an overtly female archetype as a signal of rebellion. “Women want to change their image.” Ms. Kline said in an interview. “They had been in the mimicking-men phase for so long. Now they are going for femininity.”

Well, look again, Ms. Kline. For all the ridicule that Mrs. Clinton’s boxy pantsuits have generated over the years — she seems to own one in every color, from turquoise to fuchsia — her mannishly functional wardrobe remains the go-to choice for women on the path to power.

On their own steam — or perhaps at the suggestion of a battery of campaign advisers — the majority of candidates are retreating, as they have for decades, to the relative safety of an anodyne uniform. Understated to a fault, its chief components are a formless suit, flat or low-heeled shoes and a noncommittal hairstyle. It’s a brusquely masculine image tempered occasionally by a strand of pearls and dainty, never dangly, earrings (the latter deemed too distracting for television cameras).