by “What are you wearing?” The most common question asked on any red carpet is also the same question I was asked after I was raped One case is meant to celebrate fashion and agency to place the blame and guilt on you.
In 2019, I was attending a fashion show, and there was that question again: What are you wearing? I was asked to be there as an activist. In the years following my attack in 2013, I did a lot of work on survivors’ rights to make sure what happened to me didn’t happen to others. The question took me back to after my rape but then it triggered a light bulb moment. I thought, what if we created a place for survivors to recall that question in a new context that was empowering and celebrating their agency? I wanted to raise awareness of sexual assault in a whole new way – by organizing a Survivor Fashion Show during New York Fashion Week.
At that point, I did a lot of legislative work through my activism. In 2014, I founded my non-profit, Rise, which is dedicated to supporting survivors of sexual assault. With the help of my team, I played a key role in drafting what would become the Survivors’ Rights Act of 2016, which passed Congress unanimously and established a series of basic protections for survivors. After my rape, I remember walking into my local rape crisis center in Massachusetts and seeing the waiting room filled with other survivors. The act of rape itself is not the greatest injustice I have ever experienced but the subsequent denial of my rights by the country I love. In the state of Massachusetts, rape kits, the evidence collected after an attack, could be destroyed within six months. I had to file an extension request every six months to keep my equipment from being destroyed. My bill stated that survivors must be notified of their rights, that they do not have to pay for their rape equipment, and that they must be informed of any findings on rape equipment. More importantly in 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.
Although I have always tried to incorporate my passions into my work, I have never done anything that really involved my love of fashion on a large scale. So I, along with my colleagues at Rise, decided to organize a runway event that showed how little the act of sexual violence has to do with 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 several other brands have lent a range of clothing, 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 emblazoned with the text of the Survivors’ Bill of Rights, I was overcome with a mix of emotions. I was joined by survivors and other allies, and ambassadors from the United Nations, diplomats, policy makers, and influencers all came to watch. We hoped to capture their attention and, more importantly, inspire their empathy. Finding the courage to face my trauma publicly was a great strength. But in that moment, I was not alone.
The fashion show is now an event that we hold every year during New York Fashion Week. He also inspired us to create a traveling exhibition called “What were you wearing?,” which he premiered at the UN headquarters in 2022. There are 103 mannequins representing the 1.3 billion survivors of sexual violence around the world. deep Among those 103, five outfits, including mine, came directly from the closets of survivors who shared their stories with us. Some of the most heartbreaking outfits include a baby diaper, a military uniform, and a baby bathing suit. The goal was to prove that there is no way to distinguish between the clothing worn by a survivor and the clothing not worn by survivors; what we were spending really didn’t matter, and we should shift our blame and focus to the perpetrators and their accountability. The exhibition has since been shown at our fashion show, the European Parliament in Brussels, and the World Health Organization in Geneva.
In September 2022, the exhibition still decorated the UN headquarters when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Survivors’ Bill of Rights. This significant resolution took six years. It outlined and codified a series of basic steps for countries to take to support and protect the rights of survivors of sexual assault. It mandates that member states establish gender-responsive legal mechanisms to protect survivors, expand and invest in judicial and preventive systems, and provide survivors with direct access to the justice system following their attacks.
The passage of this UN resolution is a significant victory, but it is only the beginning. The next step in our fight is to write a treaty for universal jurisdiction over rape, ensuring that rappers cannot avoid justice by fleeing to another country. We have started to draft and share this treaty with the member states of the United Nations 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 bioastronomy researcher for the International Institute for Astronomical 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 when I was testifying before the Senate, I chose to wear strong red dresses to remind me of my power. Now, every day I choose an outfit that shows how I want to feel, whether it’s a sharp outfit for a political or Vietnamese meeting. áo dài leading my legacy. This year, as part of the Space for Humanity Citizen Astronaut Program, I will be the first Vietnamese woman ever to go into space. That confidence in what we’re wearing gives us the ability to keep fighting for our dreams, and it’s given me the opportunity to make mine come true.
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