“It’s really exciting – anything that bucks ageism!” Perry says, noting that Pelosi’s vibrantly colourful choices are part of her strength. “Young women are looking up to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Nancy Pelosi and Brigitte Macron. This is women of a certain age who are earning their platform.”

Pelosi remains a divisive figure, though, including among liberals. And among certain fans of her style, there’s a hint of ambivalence. In a phone conversation, Ehrenreich, a self-described leftist and author of the muckraking book Nickel and Dimed, says she has often found Pelosi’s politics too centrist.

“I’d always thought of her as a sort of mainstream Democrat,” says Ehrenreich, who is a vocal supporter of politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Why Melania Trump’s fashion outlook is style first, not America First, despite Donald’s rallying cry

She described Pelosi’s swearing-in dress – which is really more fuchsia than red – as a metaphor for her complicated feelings about the House speaker. “I don’t actually wear dresses,” she says drily, but Pelosi “looked great. And I thought, ‘Wow, she’s really coming into her own’.”

Publicly, Pelosi hasn’t embraced the attention on what she wears. (She declined to comment for this article.) She isn’t alone in this stance: female leaders often reject scrutiny of their appearance, which can be inherently sexist and has long been believed to distract from their ideas and accomplishments. Yet there are signs that attitudes are changing.

Younger leaders are often more willing to embrace style as another weapon in their arsenal. Ocasio-Cortez famously shared one of her favoured lipsticks (Stila’s Stay All Day liquid lipstick in Beso) when she heard women were asking.

Pelosi may not like to talk about her clothes, but it’s clear that she puts thought into what she wears. She bought the fuchsia dress, which is from the Swiss label Akris – the women’s wear equivalent of Brioni, the Italian brand favoured by male executives – at Bergdorf Goodman specifically for the swearing-in ceremony, according to a person familiar with the transaction. (That person, who was not authorised to speak for Pelosi on the topic, talked to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity.)

Pelosi also stayed largely mum when her clothes drew attention in December. As she strode out of the White House looking victorious in a brick-red wool coat and sunglasses, having baited President Donald Trump into taking responsibility for the coming government shutdown, she tipped her sunglasses. Her swagger went viral. So did the coat.

From hair to suits: style matters when Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un meet

“Has anybody figured what coat this is she’s wearing?” tweeted Barry Jenkins, director of Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, in a thread that revealed him to be as passionate about clothing as he is about Pelosi.

He wrapped up: “She knew exactly what she was doing wearing THIS coat on THIS day coming out of THAT room, placing THOSE shades on JUST so. This is diplomacy in motion, soft power wielded like a machete through the diligent, decisive act of dressing.” (Jenkins did not respond to several interview requests.)

Asked by Elle magazine whether the red coat was a deliberate choice, Pelosi said, “I had no plan or intention; it was just clean. Clean should be the first criteria.”

The person I spoke to who is familiar with Pelosi’s habits was eager to debunk an oft-repeated myth that her husband, Paul, acts as her stylist. He doesn’t. The speaker doesn’t employ a stylist and shops for herself at places such as Bergdorf and Donna Lewis, an independent boutique in Alexandria, Virginia. According to the source, Donna Lewis is where she buys a number of her workhorse tailored skirt- and pantsuits.

The red coat turned out to be six-year-old Max Mara. The Italian brand, deluged with requests, promised to reissue the style. Ian Griffiths, a British former punk-rocker who is the designer of Max Mara, even explicitly adopted Pelosi as his muse for his fall 2019 collection, which he described as “a thorough analysis of how clothes empower”. The runway show in Milan in February opened with three bold colours – turquoise, blue and cornflower – of the sort that Pelosi favours.

That month, InStyle magazine announced a new fashion craze – the “Pelosi power scarf” – which sent women to Hermès scarf counters for the same silk pieces. And when Julia Roberts, Helen Mirren, Angela Bassett and myriad others donned pink dresses at the Oscars ceremony in February, Pelosi was widely credited with helping to spark the trend with her fuchsia Akris dress.

While the speaker may not acknowledge it, her safe yet well-cut choices do convey a message. “She’s conservative without being boring. She’s an alpha woman who is not afraid to show her feathers,” says Jill Totenberg, a communications consultant who has coached executives on their presentation strategies. “It evokes strength.”

Nina McLemore, a designer who dresses a lengthy list of influential leaders including senator Elizabeth Warren, former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, Hillary Clinton and Supreme Court justice Elena Kagan, says Pelosi – who is not a client – follows most of her rules for power dressing.

Those include: solid, bright colours (patterns are distracting); well-fitted pants (neither baggy nor snug); sleeves at or above the wrist bone (too long and “they make you look insignificant”); and high-quality fabrics (“men actually know more about the quality of fabric than women realise”). “She stands straight and she’s perfectly groomed,” McLemore says of Pelosi.

Shannon Watts, founder of the gun-control advocacy group Moms Demand Action, admires the way Pelosi’s suits often match her “killer heels” in bright tones. Yet none of that would matter if Pelosi weren’t a skilled – and, at the moment, highly successful – politician.

“Speaker Pelosi stands out in every room she’s in mainly because she’s a brilliant badass,” Watts notes. Indeed, it’s certainly no coincidence that Pelosi’s fashion cachet increased at her moment of political triumph – a hard-fought return to the speakership that required her to lead the Democrats to victory last November, then survive a rebellion within her own ranks.

And it isn’t just her clothes that are inspiring imitation. Lauren Mechling, a New York-based author and editor, noted recently on Twitter that her mother had asked her hairstylist to make her “look like Nancy Pelosi.” It was a joke – sort of. “She respects [Pelosi],” Mechling explained in an email. “A well-coiffed hero!”