Wendy Brandes Comments on Why Fashion 'Torments' Women Leaders

The Washington Post has released "On Leadership: A weekly video series with prominent national and international leaders." The latest feature is an interview with Wendy Brandes. As pointed out in the video transcript, Brandes is a full-time entrepreneur who draws on her affinity for strong, powerful women leaders to fuel her own jewlry collection.

As Brandes strives to establish her business and promote its prescence, she reflects upon her own experiences with good as well as bad leadership and notes the success and failures of famous women worldwide. While her jewlry collection can be expensive, what differentiates her items is "the backstory of the women who have inspired them."

Brandes makes a few interesting points and observations in the WP video piece. A few of her comments on why fashion 'torment' women leaders include the following:

• It can be dangerous in some positions to change your look too much because people will get distracted by that and it's much more an issue for women as it is for men.
• In politics and business, you want one kind of presentation, and you need it to be very consistent, but it's hard for women to win because if you dress too fashionably people will complain about that, and if you dress too unfashionably people are going to complain about that too.

Brandes also explains that Hillary Clinton has just been tormented by fashion over the years. In Brandes' opinion, Clinton is not stylish. Clinton is focused on other things and it's okay, Brandes notes.

Prior to a career change into jewlry design in 2004, Wendy Brandes was established in the media and marketing profession for 15 years. She worked at the Wall Street Journal, People.com, and investment banking firm Lehman Brothers.