Why are women wearing white at the DNC? A look behind the historic reason

The 2024 Democratic National Convention is coming to a conclusion Thursday night in Chicago, with Vice President Kamala Harris slated to deliver remarks and formally accept the party's presidential nomination for the November general election.

Harris will be the first Black woman to serve as the presidential nominee for a major party in American history, with many female Democratic delegates marking the historic night with their attire.

There appeared to be a coordinated effort among female delegates and Democratic supporters as they arrived at the United Center on Thursday afternoon, with security lines and convention floor seats filling up with women clad in white suits, dresses and other attire.

So when Harris takes the stage to accept the Democratic presidential nomination — becoming the first Black woman, and only the second woman overall, to do so — she will be looking out across a sea filled with the color of women’s suffrage, the movement that culminated with American women securing the right to vote in 1920.

The homage is a couture callback to other momentous political events in which women wearing white have played a role, particularly for other glass ceiling moments.