It is the last day of the semester at UC Berkeley. My classmates and I are pinning up our project boards that we worked on for the entire semester and we are all very nervous. There is nothing more brutal than an architecture design review critique. Most of us did not sleep for the last few days and we know that the reviewers will completely obliterate our hard work and harshly criticize us, the future architects.

On this occasion, I wear black - not as a grieving color, but as an invisibility cloak. I look at myself in the mirror: of course, I am not invisible, quite the opposite, wearing black on a sunny California morning is a sharp contrast. I am very much visible, and I look great in black, just like all the other architects before me.

I know that whatever space I will be in, my black clothing will look good with the backdrop. Don’t get me wrong, it is not vanity, it is a professional side effect: architects are visual creatures who care a lot about what things look like. And on that day in the architecture studio, my black outfit is also my camouflage. It makes me feel less of a target for criticism, as if I were trying to fit in with the rest of the architects. And look good in the process.

I survive the critique. Fifteen years go by.

I have my own architecture practice and an awesome business partner who also happens to be an Eastern European woman I met at UC Berkeley, at the same time as I discovered the power of the black outfit. We are meeting up to attend a professional event. When we see each other, we laugh! Both of us are wearing signature architect’s black. Women in black we are. We go to the event and rock it, with a few questions like, “Why do architects wear black?”

P.S.:
Other reasons we hear from our friends in the industry about wearing black include things like black being simple and minimalist, not needing to make a decision every day, not getting dirty, looking like Karl Lagerfeld, being an introvert, and looking good.