My Favourite Pieces: the pins that send out a message for Jill Wine-Banks

American lawyer Jill Wine-Banks’ brooch collection encourages people to follow the news. “I really believe that if we don’t know the truth and the facts, we can’t make good decisions about candidates, about voting, about defending our rights and democracy,” says the former assistant Watergate special prosecutor, who has held positions including general counsel of the US army. “So to the extent that it has engaged an audience that might otherwise not have [been], I think it’s important.”

In her current role as a legal analyst on US television news channel MS NOW, Wine-Banks wears pieces that reflect the political stories of the day. Thanks in part to hundreds of gifts from fans, she has accumulated more than 1,500 of what she calls “message pins”. Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright used brooches as a means of communication, but that is not the inspiration behind Wine-Banks’ fondness for the accessory. Her interest stretches back to childhood. Alongside her pieces for messaging, she has many fine and costume jewels. She is “obsessed” with brooches and looks for them everywhere she goes. “I almost always wear a pin,” says Wine-Banks, who for this interview sports a paper clip, something Norwegians wore as a symbol of resistance during the second world war. “I feel naked without them now.”

Antique opal brooch

During a Watergate hearing in November 1973, Wine-Banks questioned Rose Mary Woods, Richard Nixon’s secretary, about an 18-and-a-half minute gap in a White House audio tape. Wine-Banks wore a gold brooch with opals and small seed pearls pinned to her beige ascot blouse, a favourite from the day she bought it at Tiny Jewel Box, a jewellery shop in Washington DC, in the early 1970s.

It was Wine-Banks’ clothing that generated media coverage, however, with a New York Times headline that month calling her “A Lawyer in Miniskirts”. “I was the only woman [on the trial team] and so that did get attention, but not in a good way,” she recalls. “I mean it was so sexist. Nobody reported on what my two male colleagues wore.”

Wine-Banks’ questioning led to Woods’ demonstration in the White House of the “Rose Mary Stretch”, after she claimed to have accidentally erased some of the tape when stretching to answer the telephone while transcribing. “It turned out to be quite a day,” says Wine-Banks.

Art deco brooch

Wine-Banks wrote a memoir about her experiences as a young lawyer, The Watergate Girl (2020). One working title, inspired by a Ginger Rogers anecdote, for the book had been Dancing Backwards in High Heels. Her husband spotted a large costume brooch of a couple dancing at Randolph Street Market in Chicago. “Most of my pins are not that expensive, but the minute I saw it, I knew I had to have it and I didn’t care what [the vendor] was asking,” she says.

She alternated between wearing this piece and a small replica of her memoir, made by New York-based 3D printing specialist Woke And Bespoke Shop, during her book tour.

Vintage celluloid eagle

For her first TV appearance as a legal analyst in 2017, Wine-Banks wore a costume jewellery piece she felt “represented patriotism”. “At the time, all the men on TV were wearing American flag pins on their lapels and I thought, ‘That’s so trite’, and so I looked through my collection,” she says.

She picked out a celluloid eagle holding a shield that says, “Defend America”. She thinks it dates from either the first or second world war. A viewer asked Wine-Banks about it on social media. She then looked through her collection to see what she “could wear to send messages” in future. “And then it became a guessing game online as to what does Jill’s pin mean,” says Wine-Banks, who started collecting pieces that might convey messages.

Telephone box

It was a viewer who sent Wine-Banks her piece depicting a woman on a call in a telephone box. She wore it on TV in 2018 at a time when Scott Pruitt, then head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, was under scrutiny over the $43,000 installation of a soundproof booth in which he could make calls.

“Someone very quickly sent me this pin while that was still hot news and I wore it immediately,” says Wine-Banks. She did not realise until she was unpinning the “fabulous” piece that the door of the box opens to reveal a woman wearing a top featuring the female gender symbol, and a cape. Wine-Banks likens her to a superwoman.

Lady Justice

An early theme of Wine-Banks’ message pin collection was Lady Justice. She bought this silver, bronze and copper coloured metal piece from online marketplace Etsy, which is the source of many of her purchases. It features Lady Justice holding the scales of justice, a law book and a Greek column.

“One of the reasons I like the Lady Justice is because when I’m travelling and doing shows I can’t predict what the news of the day will be to wear a specific pin that’s related to the news,” says Wine-Banks, co-host of the SistersInLaw podcast, which has Lady Justice as its logo. “Justice is always relevant.”