"The form-fitting dresses and retro color palette that Sinema favors are a way of broadcasting her bona fides as a middle-class politician and thus someone in step with middle-class values."

"One might laugh at how literal this sounds as political stagecraft, but consider that almost all people in this country think of themselves as middle class, regardless of how much (or little) money they have. It is our cultural default, and we see it as normative. We use 'middle-class' interchangeably with other powerful nationalist signifiers like 'citizen,' 'voter' and 'American.' And, though my progressive comrades may balk at this comparison, if you compare Sinema to some of Congress’s best-known female politicians, her style is easily the most accessible to her constituents. I know enough about fashion, and how much it costs, to know that few American women can afford to dress like, for instance, the preternaturally turned-out Nancy Pelosi. In fact, part of what makes Sinema’s style performance so uncomfortable for many of us is how middle-class it is: She doesn’t seem to be trying to do better. But that does not mean her style story lacks aspiration.... [Her] presentation reads like 'someone who’s got a catalog budget but is trying to imagine what that high-end editorial looks like, someone who aspires to be cool and edgy.' One dimension of class in Sinema’s sartorial performance is that it is basic but aspirational, not in power, but in coolness."

Another article about Kyrsten Sinema's clothing in the NYT. This one is "How Kyrsten Sinema Uses Clothing to Signal Her Social Class" by Tressie McMillan Cottom, who is "an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science, the author of 'Thick: And Other Essays' and a 2020 MacArthur fellow."