Say it with a brooch: what message was Lady Hale's spider sending?

Say it with a brooch: what message was Lady Hale's spider sending?

The judge is the latest powerful woman to use a brooch to make a coded statement

All the day’s political developments – live

Lauren Cochrane and Martin Belam

Tue 24 Sep 2019 14.37 BSTFirst published on Tue 24 Sep 2019 13.56 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2019/sep/24/say-it-with-a-brooch-how-a-fashion-item-became-a-political-statement

Lady Hale’s image was beamed across the world with all the signifiers of the supreme court – papers, judge’s bench, austere clothing. It was the court’s stunning verdict that would dominate the headlines, of course, but the judge’s spider brooch – pinned to her black dress – had the optics that made it a story of its own.

Wearing a spider to deliver news that trapped the prime minister felt pointed – a message backed on a safety pin. Twitter certainly read it that way. “What could Brenda Hale be telling us with her AMAZING giant spider brooch?” wrote @Anna_Girling. By Tuesday afternoon, there was a call for the brooch to have its own Twitter account.

Anna Girling

@Anna_Girling

'Weaving spiders come not here', 'Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive', etc.... What could Brenda Hale be telling us with her AMAZING giant spider brooch...?

The brooch soon made its way, via social media attention, on to a T-shirt sold by Balcony Shirts. Based, ironically, in Boris Johnson’s Uxbridge constituency, the company has donated 30% of proceeds to the homelessness charity Shelter. It has raised more than £5,000 in the couple of hours after Hale delivered the court’s verdict.

A spokesperson for the company said: “We often print topical t-shirts, and as everyone on Twitter was talking about the brooch we thought it was a great angle for a new design. We can’t believe it’s taken off quite the way it has. We picked Shelter as homelessness appears to be a growing problem in Uxbridge, and it’s nice to do our part.”

Brooches are enjoying something of a moment in fashion this autumn – seen on the catwalk at Versace and Erdem – but Hale is a brooch trailblazer. She has a particular fondness for creepy crawlies – frogs, beetles and the like. On her profile on the supreme court website, she wears a brooch of a caterpillar – like the spider, it’s an animal that hardly has the cute factor on its side.

With the spider, Hale joins a list of high-profile women who have used the seemingly unassuming brooch to send a message – at least, some observers think so.

The Queen’s brooches for Donald Trump’s visit in 2018 – one of which was given to her by Barack Obama – were interpreted as statements of her displeasure with the current US president.

Madeleine Albright, as secretary of state under Bill Clinton, was open about her use of brooches – or “pins” to Americans. After being called an “unparalleled serpent” by Iraqi state media, she wore a snake brooch to her next meeting with the country’s officials and her brooch-as-statement career began.

Albright published a book called Read My Pins in 2009 and has continued to allow her pins to say it all.

The smashed glass ceiling design, worn to watch Hillary Clinton make her nominee speech in 2016, broke the internet. Hale’s spider could do the same. It certainly suggests Hale doesn’t squirm when faced with any kind of insect.