He is the real deal,” former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman said, but Minnesota native Hegseth faced tough questions from Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Fashion is essentially a story of what the paleontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge called “punctuated equilibrium,” a theory positing that significant change comes in spurts that interrupt lengthy periods of stability or slow evolution. It’s how we got L.B.D.s, the New Look, pants, the possibilities of destruction.