Jaws across the country nearly fell to the floor on Monday morning as the words “MONICA LEWINSKY FOR REFORMATION” headlined the newest promotional email from Reformation.
The popular Los Angeles-based women’s brand launched a new campaign titled, “You’ve Got the Power,” to encourage voting, with public figure and activist Monica Lewinsky as the face of the new campaign.
“Featuring strong silhouettes, tasteful tailoring, and our signature sustainable fibers, our new collection is here to remind you that you’ve got the power,” the campaign page reads.
Lewinsky is pictured in Reformation’s workwear clothing line, sporting a leather trench coat, a cherry red two-piece set and a strong, black A-line dress, to name a few. She looks like the picture of professional female power.
“Voting is using your voice to be heard, and it’s the most defining aspect of our democracy. If you wanna complain for the next four years, you gotta go out and vote,” Lewinsky said on the campaign page.
However, Lewinsky was not always the face of female empowerment in the workplace. For decades, it was quite the opposite. Lewinsky gained infamy for her highly-publicized affair with then-President Bill Clinton from 1995-1997 when she was a 22-year-old intern at the White House. This affair led to Clinton’s impeachment, only the second presidential impeachment at the time.
Reformation also collaborated with Vote.org to feature information on their website about how to vote for the upcoming general election on Nov. 5, 2024. According to the website, the company has also made a $25,000 donation to Vote.org, the largest nonpartisan voter resource in the country.
An unspecified portion of the proceeds from their limited edition sweatshirt, with their “You’ve Got the Power” slogan, will also be donated to Vote.org, per their website.
In the aftermath of the Clinton scandal, Lewinsky faced decades of outward misogyny, death threats and bullying that led her to step away from the public eye until recent years. Now, Lewinsky is an outspoken activist and author, advocating for helping others who have been cyberbullied and publicly shamed.
Lewinsky returned to the public eye in 2014 with a Vanity Fair essay titled “Shame and Survival.”
“I was patient zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously,” Lewinsky said in her 2015 Ted Talk, in regards to the newfound popularity of the Internet at the time. “A marketplace has emerged where public humiliation is a commodity, and shame is an industry.”
In recent years, Lewinsky began her own production company, called “Alt Ending Productions” in 2021 and became a producer for the FX anthology series “American Crime Story: Impeachment,” which dramatizes the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. Alt Ending Productions and Lewinsky also signed a first-look producing deal with 20th Television during the same year.
She also served as an executive producer on the 2021 Max documentary “15 Minutes of Shame,” which explores the public shaming epidemic, or “cancel culture,” on the Internet.
Lewinsky, in addition to being an outspoken public figure, author and producer is a strategic advisor to the organization Bystander Revolution, an online anti-bullying organization founded by Mackenzie Bezos.
The now 50-year-old Lewinsky’s story is not about her relationship with Clinton, but her reach and resonance with women worldwide. She has become a champion of women whose lives have been ruined by men in power, publicly slut-shamed or belittled by rapacious Internet users, as well as to anyone who has experienced cyberbullying.
Seeing Lewinsky reclaiming her power in an office space with a subtle nod to politics is not only a brilliant marketing strategy, but a powerful message to women worldwide that shame once carried is not the only possible future.
In a space where Lewinsky was belittled, taken advantage of and subject to public humiliation, she is now standing proudly and encouraging other women to make their voices heard by getting to the polls in November.
“I’m learning to weather the storm,” Lewinsky recently told the New York Times. “I’ve found that resilience is a muscle you build.”