THE LABOR OF LABOR DAY............... Back to WERK. Back to Reclamation
DON’T WAX THE CARD.
When the workplace changes, the investment changes.
THE UMPIRE IS IN POSITION
Since COVID-19 locked the country down in March 2020, the cat has been out of the bag.
We learned which jobs were truly essential. We saw how quickly employers could rewrite rules they had once called immovable. We watched dining rooms become offices, meetings become screens and workers keep entire companies functioning from home.
The traditional relationship between employer and employee had been permanently exposed.
At forty-nine, I finished the workday at my office desk. That night, I boarded a plane and woke up fifty in Paris. Work was never only where I went—it helped finance the life I had worked to experience.
FROM THE VSG ARCHIVE | Before VSG was a shop, Kimberly Suggs was already in the room—backstage in Newark after interviewing Grammy-winning musician Van Hunt.
As I prepared this piece, I learned of the passing of pioneering entertainment journalist Flo Anthony. Flo and I worked together on several projects; one of those assignments took me to Newark to interview Grammy-winning musician Van Hunt. Finding that story again reminded me that work leaves an archive—assignments accepted, rooms entered, stories preserved and people who helped make the journey possible.
I honor Flo Anthony and the trail she left behind.
Then came 2025.
Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894—just 29 years after the 13th Amendment—in a nation already enriched by generations of stolen Black labor.
Under the administration of America’s 47th president, DOGE-driven federal workforce cuts accelerated while DEI commitments were abandoned, erased, or quietly renamed..
Research estimates that DOGE reduced Black women’s federal employment by 25 percent. Black women were driven toward workplace exits—some laid off, some pushed out, and others forced to reconsider whether the institutions they had faithfully served were ever prepared to protect them.
The ledger is still open.
The table was not merely shaken.
It was flipped over.
THE RECEIPTS
The numbers tell us exactly who was standing closest when it happened.
Federal employment fell by 277,000 jobs in 2025.
Black women stood closest to the impact. In the EEOC’s FY2020 baseline, we were 11.7 percent of the civilian federal workforce—nearly twice our 6.6 percent share of the civilian labor force. Federal service had long offered a path too many private employers did not: transparent pay, benefits and some protection from individual bias.
Then that floor gave way.
THE PINK-SLIP RECEIPT: QUAY CROWNER
Quay Crowner—a career federal servant whose experience turns the employment numbers into a human receipt.
Quay Crowner was 55 and serving as the Department of Education’s director of outreach, impact and engagement when she was placed on administrative leave in
January 2025. She had spent more than two decades in director-level federal roles, including work at the IRS and Government Accountability Office.
Her job was not a DEI position.
Five years earlier, Crowner had joined a diversity-change program the Department of Education had encouraged senior employees to attend. According to ProPublica, that participation appeared to be the common thread linking her to other workers swept into the administration’s DEI purge. She was the only member of her immediate team removed.
Her position was later eliminated, and she became one of hundreds of employees represented in a legal action alleging that the purge violated federal workers’
First Amendment and civil-rights protections.
That is the breach of trust in human form: an institution encouraged the work, recorded the participation and later treated the receipt as a reason for removal.
Between January and December 2025, Black women’s federal employment fell by more than 30 percent, compared with 11.6 percent for women overall and 8.1 percent for men.
Read that again.
Our federal employment fell at nearly three times the rate of women overall and almost four times the rate of men.
A separate study of DOGE’s short-run effect through April estimated that it reduced Black women’s federal employment by approximately 25 percent, while finding no statistically significant direct effect for the other groups studied.
The damage did not stop at federal service. Across the economy, 251,000 fewer Black women were employed in August than in January. By December, we were still down 113,000.
Whether through layoffs, exits or jobs that never materialized, hundreds of thousands of Black women were moved toward uncertainty without a parachute.
These are not abstract numbers.
A lost job never belongs to only one person.
In 2024, roughly four million family households had a Black female householder with no spouse present. About 13.3 million people lived in those households—an average of 3.3 people each.
Not every woman affected by the cuts led one of those households. But the numbers show the reach of one paycheck: children, elders and families whose stability travels with hers.
The loss reaches the rent or mortgage. The grocery cart. Health insurance. Child care. Elder care. Tuition. Transportation. Medication. The emergency fund—and the ability to build one.
The cuts landed on workers.
The consequences entered Black homes.
WHEN THE PAYCHECK CHANGES, RETAIL FEELS IT
Retail should be paying attention.
There is no completed federal spending series that isolates Black women for 2024 and 2025. The clearest picture combines the latest federal Black-household data with private 2025 estimates.
Black households spent an average of $58,100 in 2024—virtually unchanged from $58,167 in 2023—even as consumer prices rose 2.9 percent. In real terms, they were already losing ground.
Where the money went matters.
Housing spending rose 7.7 percent, from $20,698 to $22,294. Transportation fell 7.4 percent. Apparel and related services rose 9.1 percent, from $1,653 to $1,804.
The desire for style did not disappear.
The room around it became tighter.
MRI-Simmons estimated Black-household discretionary spending at $259 billion in Winter 2025—14 percent of the U.S. total and up from $226 billion in 2024. Its later Fall 2025 estimate reached $272 billion.
That is enormous economic power.
But buying power is not the same as financial security.
So let us be precise.
Black women did not suddenly stop wanting beautiful clothes.
We received new information about income, security and trust.
Our spending did not simply disappear. It became more guarded, more selective and more accountable.
The full seasonal wardrobe reset may become one useful shirt.
The designer pump may become a strong trouser.
The expensive new bag may become an accessory that makes what we already own feel current again.
That is not the end of style.
It is a change in strategy.
THE VSG ANSWER: Five strategic pieces. Three ways each. Fifteen fresh looks. Start with one.
Add only what earns its place.
CALL THE GAME
I am umpiring the 2026 Back to WERK season, and I intend to call the game as it is being played.
The facts concerning Black women will not be softened, smoothed over or buried beneath another round of “Calm down and carry on.”
We will call it.
We will keep it classy.
We will remain professional.
But professionalism will no longer require pretending that we do not see what is happening around us.
There was a time when loyalty, education, excellence and hard work appeared to form a trusted relationship with the workplace. Colleagues became friends. Company picnics and summer outings were circled on the calendar. A woman could invest in a new season believing that the job was also investing in her.
Today, that relationship feels different.
There is a pause in the room. A hush. A cloud overhead.
Even a casual workplace gathering may feel like an assignment that must be considered, scripted and rehearsed. For Black women, it can feel like GAME ON all the time—with no room for a foul, a stumble or a human moment.
We see it.
We remember it.
And we will move with this new information.
That includes how we spend.
This Back to WERK season, do not wax the card.
DRESSING FOR WORK WAS WORK
Back-to-work season used to be one of my favorite times to shop.
A new bag? WAX.
One pair of designer pumps? WAX.
My one serious boot purchase for the season? WAX.
Then came the fresh coat and one beautiful cashmere sweater.
Over the years, I built a work wardrobe that was the envy of many. One CEO introduced me during a major meeting as “the best-dressed plus-size woman” he had ever seen.
Dressing for work was WORK.
I did it exceptionally well, and I took pride in it.
Fashion’s master of style, scale, and spectacle, André Leon Talley, once acknowledged my ability to make people wonder: “Is she plus-size—or not?”
That was never about making a body disappear. It was about understanding proportion, balance, fit, color, and the power of a well-considered silhouette. The goal is not to look smaller. The goal is to look intentional—polished, current, and fully yourself.
Getting dressed at any size does not require a compass once you have the right tools. VSG gives you those tools, a strategy you can repeat, and a wardrobe that reflects the woman you are now—not the woman you used to dress.
Facts.
I share this because the rules have changed.
We invest where we believe there will be a return. Right now, I am not telling you to make a major financial investment in a workplace that may no longer be prepared to invest in you.
Do not wax the card.
Choose a few strategic refresh pieces instead—clothes that work with what you already own and help you feel polished now, without leaving regret behind if the pink slip slips in.
Enough to walk into the room feeling like yourself.
Enough to remind them that you came prepared.
But not so much that you have mistaken a job for security.
THE RIGHT- NOW FIVE.
Not random. Curated.
You do not need another complete wardrobe.
You need five strategic pieces that make what you already own feel ready again—five pieces with jobs to do for work, after five and everywhere your grown-woman life takes you.
Five pieces. Three ways each. Fifteen fresh looks.
1. THE BLACK TECHNO-CREPE BLAZER
The authority piece. Wear it with your white shirt, black trouser, denim, the new five-pocket PU pant or over the vegan-leather dress. It brings structure without asking you to disappear into a traditional suit.
2. THE WORKHORSE POPLIN SHIRT—POWER RED OR CLASSIC WHITE
One wardrobe job. Two moods. Choose one: power red when the room needs to remember you, or classic white when you want the everyday workhorse—and the cleanest canvas for the heritage scarf, black blazer and every trouser already in your closet.
3. THE FIVE-POCKET VEGAN-LEATHER STRAIGHT PANT
The modern workhorse. A familiar five-pocket shape makes vegan leather easier to wear, while the high waist and straight fit keep it grown. Pair it with the blazer, either shirt or a simple knit you already own.
4. THE HERITAGE-PRINT SILKEN SCARF
The $18 refresh. Black, ivory, gold and a touch of red—at the neck, on the handbag, around the hair or tied at the wrist. Small enough to pack. Strong enough to change the whole look.
5. THE BLACK VEGAN-LEATHER FIT-AND-FLARE MIDI DRESS
The meeting-to-dinner dress. Feminine, grown and built to stand on its own. Add the blazer when the room requires more structure; remove it when the workday becomes dinner.
Five pieces.
Three ways each.
Fifteen fresh looks.
No wardrobe overhaul.
No card-waxing regret.
No disappearing into the room.
Just pieces with a job to do.
MOVE WITH THE NEW INFORMATION
This season, protect your peace.
Protect your confidence.
Protect your card.
Buy what serves your life now.
VSG dresses the grown, plus-size woman for the room as it is—not as we were once promised it would be.
She is still working. Still interviewing. Still leading. Still showing up.
And she still deserves clothes with presence, usefulness and a point of view.
Sizes 14+. Style 40+.
It shouldn’t be this hard to look nice.
At VSG, we see you—because we are you.
VANGUARD | FLO ANTHONY
Some women don’t simply have careers. They leave footprints.
Flo Anthony was one of them.
A pioneering Black journalist and familiar presence across entertainment media, Flo built a career by showing up, knowing the story and understanding that access means very little if you don’t know what to do once the door opens.
I had the opportunity to work with Flo on several projects over the years. When I learned of her passing, I went looking through my own receipts—and there she was. A reminder of another Black woman who worked, built, connected and kept moving.
In a moment when so many Black women are being pushed out, downsized and told—in one form or another—that our labor is suddenly less valuable, I wanted to say her name.
Florence “Flo” Anthony. Vanguard.
The work mattered.
The relationships mattered.
And being there mattered.
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