“What are you wearing?” It’s the most commonly asked question on any red carpet. It’s also the exact same question I was asked after I was raped. One instance is meant to celebrate fashion and agency. The other is meant to shame you for the violence that happened to you and to place blame and guilt on you. I remember feeling so alone after my assault and being shocked at how much people victim-blamed. So I decided to reclaim the question.
In 2019, I was attending a fashion show, and there was that question again: What are you wearing? I had been asked to be there as an activist. In the years following my assault in 2013, I did a lot of work around survivors’ rights in order to make sure that what happened to me wouldn’t happen to other people. The question transported me back to the aftermath of my rape but then sparked a light-bulb moment. I thought, what if we created a place for survivors to reclaim that question in a new context that was empowering and celebrated their agency? I wanted to draw awareness about sexual assault in a completely new way—by organizing a Survivor Fashion Show during New York Fashion Week.
At that point, I’d done a ton of legislative work through my activism. In 2014, I founded my nonprofit, Rise, which is focused on supporting sexual-assault survivors. With the help of my team, I played an instrumental role in drafting what would become the Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act of 2016, which was passed unanimously by Congress and established a set of basic protections for survivors. After my rape, I remember walking into my local Massachusetts rape crisis center and seeing the waiting room filled with other survivors. The greatest injustice I have ever faced was not the act of rape itself but the subsequent denial of my rights by the country I love. In the state of Massachusetts, rape kits, the evidence collected after an assault, could be destroyed in as little as six months. I had to file an extension request every six months in order to prevent my kit from being destroyed. My bill established that survivors must receive notification of their rights, must not have to pay for their rape kit, and must be informed of any result of a rape kit. Most importantly for my case, it also extended the preservation of rape kits to the full duration of the statute of limitations—a matter of years rather than months.
While I’ve always tried to incorporate my passions into my work, I had never done anything that really tapped into my love of fashion on a large scale. So I, along with my teammates at Rise, decided to organize a runway event that showcased just how little the act of sexual violence is connected to what a survivor was wearing. We organized its first iteration in 2021 at the Museum of Modern Art and invited survivors from all over the world to walk the runway in designer clothes. Dior, 3.1 Phillip Lim, Veronica Beard, and a number of other brands lent a range of outfits, from streetwear to formal dresses, to support our cause.
Walking down the runway in a custom dress designed by artists Suzanne McClelland and Alix Pearlstein and adorned with the text of the Survivors’ Bill of Rights, I was overwhelmed with a mix of emotions. Alongside me were other survivors and allies, while ambassadors from the United Nations, diplomats, policymakers, and influencers all came to watch. We were hoping to garner their attention and, more importantly, inspire their empathy. Finding the courage to confront my trauma publicly took immense strength. But in that moment, I was not alone.
The fashion show is now an event that we hold each year during New York Fashion Week. It also inspired us to create a traveling exhibit titled “What Were You Wearing?,” which made its debut at UN headquarters in 2022. It features 103 mannequins representing the 1.3 billion survivors of sexual violence worldwide. Among those 103, five outfits, including my own, came directly from the closets of survivors who shared their stories with us. Some of the most heartbreaking outfits include a baby’s diaper, a military uniform, and a child’s bathing suit. The goal was to prove that there is no way to differentiate between the outfit worn by a survivor and the outfits not worn by survivors; what we were wearing truly did not matter, and we should shift our blame and our focus on perpetrators and on their accountability. The exhibition has since been displayed at our fashion show, at the European Parliament in Brussels, and at the World Health Organization in Geneva.
In September 2022, the exhibit still decorated the UN headquarters when the Universal Survivor Bill of Rights was adopted by the UN General Assembly. This landmark resolution was six years in the making. It outlined and codified a set of basic steps for countries to take to support and safeguard the rights of survivors of sexual assault. It mandates that member states establish gender-responsive legal mechanisms for protecting survivors, that judicial and prevention systems be expanded and invested in, and that survivors have direct access to the justice system after their assault.
The passage of this UN resolution is a significant victory, but it is just the beginning. The next phase of our fight is writing a treaty for universal jurisdiction on rape, ensuring that rapists cannot evade justice by fleeing to another country. We’ve begun drafting this treaty and sharing it with United Nations member states and the World Health Organization, and we plan to introduce it next year.
What I wear has always been a conscious choice, even outside of my work with Rise. I also work as a bioastronautics researcher for the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences. During my college days at Harvard, I wore comfortable dresses to feel at home; at NASA, I wore polos commemorating past missions to feel that important legacy; and while testifying in front of the Senate, I chose to wear strong red dresses to remind me of my power. Now, every day I choose an outfit that projects how I want to feel, whether it’s a sharp suit for a political meeting or a Vietnamese áo dài to channel my heritage. This year, as part of Space for Humanity’s Citizen Astronaut Program, I will become the first Vietnamese woman to ever go to space. That confidence in what we are wearing gives us the ability to keep fighting for our dreams, and it has allowed me to accomplish mine.
Ariana Marsh is Harper Bazaar’s senior features editor. Working across print and digital, she covers the arts, culture, fashion, literature, and entertainment—and a bit of everything in between.