More than a dozen House Democratic women used fashion to make a powerful statement at the president’s State of the Union address on Thursday night, arriving in head-to-toe suffragette white.

As lawmakers from both sides of the aisle filed into the House chamber, many were seen wearing white suits as a nod to the women’s suffrage movement – most notably in an effort to show support for reproductive rights.

“As the hours count down to President Biden’s State of the Union, I’ve joined my @DemWomenCaucus colleagues in all white to symbolize our joint commitment to women’s rights,” the Democratic representative Robin Kelly of Illinois tweeted before Biden’s speech. “We will never stop advocating for women, from reproductive rights to workplace equality.”

The Democratic representative Kathy Castor of Florida said in another missive: “We are standing up for your right to make your own health care decisions including abortion.”

Biden said during his address: “In its decision to overturn Roe v Wade, the supreme court majority wrote: ‘Women are not without electoral or political power.’ No kidding. Clearly, those bragging about overturning Roe v Wade have no clue about the power of women in America. They found out, though, when reproductive freedom was on the ballot and won in 2022, 2023, and they will find out again, in 2024.”

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The color white has long been symbolic in the women’s suffrage movement. In 1908, at a rally in London’s Hyde Park, more than 300,000 protesters showed up to support a “votes for women” campaign and wore white; they were encouraged to do so by the suffragette, and a key member of the Women’s Social and Political Union, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence.

According to The Telegraph, Pethick-Lawrence was the key driver of making purple, white, and golden yellow the official colors of the suffrage movement. White became the primary color used because black-and-white photos were what people had at the time – and it was cheaper.

Case Western Reserve University history professor Einav Rabinovitch-Fox told Teen Vogue in 2020: “Even when they used yellow, which I think actually at the time, yellow might have been more popular than white as a suffrage color, at least in the United States, on a black-and-white photograph it will still look as white. They definitely used white. It’s not that white was a marginal color. Partly because white was more available than a yellow dress and it’s a cheaper fabric.”

This isn’t the first time House Democratic women have worn white to make a statement and support a specific cause. In 2017, some women in Congress wore white during Trump’s address to Congress to protest his ascension to the presidency. In 2019, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic representative from New York, became the youngest woman ever sworn into Congress and wore a white suit “to honour the women who paved the path before me, and for all the women yet to come”. A year later, in 2020, House Democratic women again wore all-white outfits during Trump’s State of the Union address.

Other sartorial statements at this year’s State of the Union included both Republican and Democratic lawmakers wearing pins and stickers to honor Israeli hostages still being held captive in Gaza. Scattered House progressives were seen wearing Palestinian keffiyehs to symbolize Palestinian solidarity.