As soon as Kamala Harris took to the stage in Wilmington, Delaware, on Saturday night, social media was abuzz with talk of her outfit. It was a telling sign, for better or worse, of the public scrutiny her fashion will face in the coming years.

But while the Vice President-elect's acceptance speech will surely, and rightly, be remembered for the words of inspiration offered to women in America and around the world, the commentary on her wardrobe was not as trivial as it might seem. Because, rather than distracting from her words, the white pantsuit and bow blouse served to reinforce her message of unity and emancipation.

The color white has long been associated with the women's suffrage movement, adopted as a symbol of moral purity alongside green for hope and purple for dignity. It also signaled their ethos of nonviolence, an olive branch to those threatened by their then-radical calls for political equality.

Harris' very deliberate choice of outfit was a gesture of solidarity with the long line of women who have defied expectations in American politics. It demonstrated that the Vice President-elect does not consider herself an exception to the rule, but rather part of a continuum -- of the slowly bending "arc of the moral universe," as President-elect Joe Biden put it in his own speech, quoting Martin Luther King Jr.

On the biggest stages, and at the most crucial moments, female politicians have embraced unspoken symbolism -- whether that's Jacinda Ardern adopting a hijab in an act of unity with Muslims in the wake of the Christchurch terror attack, or congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez applying red lipstick like "war paint" as she challenged a fellow representative for alleged sexism.

On Saturday night, Harris not only showed that she is aware of this power, but that she is unafraid to harness it.