Quaker Ranter Rotating Header Image

Avoiding Plain Dress Designer Clothing

Jul 21st, 2004
by .

A guest piece by “David”:mailto:mquadd@yahoo.com, orig­i­nally posted on the “Plain and Mod­est Dress Yahoo Group”:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PlainAndModestDress
“Here are a few things I do know that apply to me. First, I feel very at odds with our soci­ety that focuses on the most superf­i­cal things. Our soci­ety spends BILLIONS on make-up, hair dye, plas­tic surgery, breast inplants, push-up bras, designer clothes… Beyond that, my feel­ings about plain dress­ing get less clear. Is a uni­form what I am seek­ing? Those groups who were very uni­form cloth­ing tend to be insu­lar and often attact as much atten­tion to them­selves as a belly shirt and designer jeans!”


From: “mquadd”
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 8:07 am
Sub­ject: Intro­duc­tion and ques­tions
Hi. My name is David and I attend but am not a mem­ber of the Friends Meet­ing here. I was actu­ally raised as an Epis­co­palian although I had sev­eral uncles who were birth-right Quak­ers. I grew up (for my first 10 years) in Chester County, PA which tra­di­tion­ally was an area with a high con­cen­tra­tion of Quak­ers. I would expect that this is no longer true as the area has become quite sub­ur­ban with a big influx of new res­i­dents. Nonethe­less, I grew up attend­ing meet­ing now and then with rel­a­tives at var­i­ous meet­ings in Chester County and north­ern Dele­ware. That was in the 1960s and was a time when some peo­ple, mostly older peo­ple (peo­ple most likely born in the 1800s mean­ing these peo­ple were in their 70s or 80s in the 1960s), still used plain talk. Even in the 1960s, in a fairly rural area, this was more of an except­ing than the rule and was lim­ited to the old­est mem­bers of the meet­ing and never used out­side the Quaker com­mu­nity. Those who used plain talk never used it out­side of the Quaker community–home, Friends, and meet­ing. As far as I know, they never used this type of talk for busi­ness or rela­tions or out­side the com­mu­nity.
At age 10 we moved to Lan­caster County. At that time, many Mem­monites who now no longer dress plain or wear cov­er­ings did still did both of these. I went to school with many Men­non­ite kids. In addi­tion I became friends with sev­eral Old Order Amish fam­i­lies (and one Beachy fam­ily) with whom I am still friends. That was 35 years ago, I have wit­nessed the plain tes­ti­mony weaken in each of these groups includ­ing the Old Order Amish. I actu­ally spent much of my child­hood and teenage years hang­ing out with one patic­u­lar Old Order Amish fam­ily as way to escape the insan­ity of hav­ing drug addicted and alco­holic par­ents. In their very sim­ple and unstated Chris­tian­ity, they were very will­ing to pro­vide food, shel­ter, and love to a very con­fused boy (me).
Any­way, the Lan­caster Con­fer­ence Men­non­ites (now part of the largest Men­non­ite group) seem to be totally main­stream. Per­haps there are some who still fol­low the for­mer order. The Beachy Amish now dress like con­ser­v­a­tive Men­non­ites and less and less like Amish. Finally, I was watched the Amish allow lots of mod­ern changes in their dis­ci­pline although their basic cloth­ing is pretty much unchanged but sun glasses are now allowed and many Amish girls and women pluck their eyebrows–both not allowed in the 1970s. By the way, in the late 1960s they had already adopted cotton-poly blends for both cloth­ing and quilts!
The rea­son for that, per­haps odd, bio­graph­i­cal sketch is to give some back­ground on my expo­sure to plain groups and, more impor­tantly, plain thought. I have toyed with the idea of plain dress­ing although I can’t give a clear rea­son why I feel this. Is it a call­ing or am I just crazy? I do know that the sta­bil­ity I found in that Amish house in the 1970s most likely had a giant influ­ence on me (a happy Amish fam­ily where I had fun vs. liv­ing in a fam­ily that was in the self-distruct mode due to addic­tion). I also I have clear mem­o­ries of hav­ing Quaker teach­ers in ele­mently school and van­ity and world­li­ness was a bad thing. It was dur­ing the height of the Viet Nam war, so there was this odd hippy-Quaker thing going on with some of my teach­ers. I am sure some of you who were around the RSF in the 1960s can relate. So here I am still toy­ing with these ideas and still attempt­ing to define my own reli­gious feel­ings at the mid­dle of my life (I am 45).
Here are a few things I do know that apply to me. First, I feel very at odds with our soci­ety that focuses on the most superf­i­cal things. Our soci­ety spends BILLIONS on make-up, hair dye, plas­tic surgery, breast inplants, push-up bras, designer clothes (that are no dif­fer­ent that basic clothes except the label and might even be of lower qual­ity).… Peo­ple are judged on the these issues. Char­ac­ter and moral­ity (a loaded term that seems to have been high­jacked by the rightwing and ultraconservatives)seems to be sec­ondary to these very super­fi­cial things. What we tell our­selves and our chil­dren is that we are not ade­quate as we are. We have to change our body and then drape it was overly priced clothes to count. The out­side is more impor­tant that the inside. This is sick. It is dis­truc­tive. It is a sin.
Beyond that, my feel­ings about plain dress­ing get less clear. Is a uni­form what I am seek­ing? Those groups who were very uni­form cloth­ing tend to be insu­lar and often attact as much atten­tion to them­selves as a belly shirt and designer jeans! If you doubt this, go to Lan­caster County and attempt to drive on Rt. 340. The attrac­tion that the plain peo­ple attract in that area rivals any movie star or rock con­cert. Lan­caster gets lit­er­ally mil­lions of tourists each year. So is that type of uni­form dress­ing that is quite dis­tinct serv­ing a good pur­pose? I am not sure but am just offer­ing a ques­tion rather than a judge­ment. Other groups that dress quite plain such as ultra-orthodox Jews are not so much a tourist attrac­tion but clearly are insu­lar and seper­ate from the larger soci­ety. Many peo­ple view this as being “stand off-ish” which I hope is nobody’s goal. I have heard peo­ple apply this type of judge­ment to plain chris­t­ian groups also. So, I would be very inter­ested in hear­ing what dri­ves oth­ers to dress plain? If you are a Quaker, what has been the reac­tion at your meet­ing? I once met a plain dress­ing Quaker who said that he had received more neg­a­tive than pos­i­tive reac­tions when vis­it­ing other meet­ings. Are there any meet­ings where all or most mem­bers dress plain? In my child­hood expe­ri­ences, there was no plain dress­ing in any Quaker meet­ings in Chester County or in Dele­ware. I have not even run into any­one who uses plain lan­guage for over 30 years except that one plain dress­ing man. Clearly, I know no Quak­ers who have been raised with the idea of plain dress­ing or plain lan­guage includ­ing some of my cousins who are worldly to say the least. What makes plain. I know of “black bumper Men­non­ites” who drive a black bumper Mer­cedes. Is that plain? Why is a Volvo often con­sid­ered ok but a BMW is bad? They both cost $40K. Often I see this type of think­ing in those who claim to fol­low a less than worldly life style. I think there is always a risk of falling into the mind­set of some labels being good and oth­ers being bad. Once a par­tic­u­lar brand, say a type of hat or type of jeans, is thought to be the proper “plain uni­form” does that not become the designed cloth­ing of the plain dressers? I am not sure. What I find is that once you jump into this topic, it becomes com­pli­cated and that is not the point.
One final ques­tion, what ben­e­fits do you recieve from plain dress­ing?
Thanks. David

h4. See: “Resources on Quaker Plain Dress”:http://www.nonviolence.org/Quaker/plain_dress.php
bq. *Note from Mar­tin Kel­ley:* I’m start­ing to col­lect sto­ries from other Friends and fellow-religious on issues like plain dress, the tes­ti­monies and faith renewal. This is part of that project.

Posted in: Quaker.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · · ·

← →
  • http://www.littlebits.org Ann Marie

    That was my con­cern with strict, plain dress. It takes away from the whole sim­plic­ity tes­ti­mony, I think, and is not mod­est, because it draws atten­tion to you. Ortho­dox women I know believe that, that if they wear a snood instead of a wig, it is not mod­est if they go out of their neigh­bor­hood, because the snood draws atten­tion — and that is not mod­est.
    Plain dress is good for its sim­plic­ity, but once, I think, it gets so out­ra­geous you get stares, you may have gone to far.
    It’s some­thing I’m still think­ing about.

  • bo bo

    you should realy think about putting pic­tures on your web site!!!!!! >:-/

  • Isabel Pen­raeth

    In response to Ann Marie’s post above:
    I am a plain-dressing Quaker. I wear the full regalia: dress, ker­chief, cap, bon­net, and I wear it because I believe God has asked me to, for what rea­son I really can­not ven­ture, but not, I think, because it is sim­ple or because it is mod­est, though in my expe­ri­ence it is both.
    The entry con­fused me because it offers first that plain dress “takes away” from the “whole sim­plic­ity tes­ti­mony.” And then it states that it is “good for its sim­plic­ity.” I think it is fairly obvi­ous that plain dress is con­sid­er­ably sim­pler than fash­ion­able dress. And I also believe quite firmly that it is mod­est.
    If by “immod­est” one can mean “attract unwanted atten­tion,” I haven’t expe­ri­enced that. Women are usu­ally politely curi­ous, and make all sorts of flat­ter­ing assump­tions about my quilt­ing and bak­ing skills, and it is only women I am approached by in pub­lic. The only thing I have found with men in pub­lic is that they are fairly likely to open doors for me, but they keep a respect­ful dis­tance and do not engage me in con­ver­sa­tion. The only time I ever felt uncom­fort­able was when an Amish man stared at me, and stared at me hard. I think he stared because he was try­ing to fig­ure out what I was … obvi­ously not Amish, but obvi­ously plain.
    If by immod­est one means “try­ing to attract the sex­ual atten­tion of the male sex” (who has ever described a man as immod­est?), which I think is the most applic­a­ble def­i­n­i­tion of the word in this sit­u­a­tion, I can say plain dress is not even sex­u­ally attrac­tive to (most) men, much less sexy. I don’t think sim­ply attract­ing atten­tion can be described accu­rately with the word “immod­est,” though I am aware that this is the basis of Ortho­dox women wear­ing wigs rather than some other sort of cov­er­ing. If we fol­low the logic that attract­ing atten­tion is immod­est, then women speak­ing in pub­lic becomes immod­est as does sim­ply being par­tic­u­larly beau­ti­ful or par­tic­u­larly ugly. This is the logic, I think, that leads to burqas …
    Plain dress does attract atten­tion, but it is also a pow­er­ful form of Quaker wit­ness, and a silent one at that. I think it is for this wit­ness­ing that God has asked me to plain dress, but I don’t require a rea­son, as long as I am being obe­di­ent to God’s will.
    My only prob­lem with some­one wear­ing plain dress would be if it became an “empty form” which was not based on a lead­ing from God, if it were not an expres­sion of Truth. How to test that is the chal­lenge, as test­ing all lead­ings is a challenge.

  • Kelly

    I came from a typ­i­cal Amer­i­can back­ground. Reli­gion was never stressed in my house­hold grow­ing up. Although both sets of my grand­par­ents were both very involved in their church’s. One of my grandpa’s is a Bap­tist preacher. I took it upon myself to seek the word of God and have been doing so since I was about twelve. My extended fam­ily all live in Ohio near Holmes County so I was exposed to the Amish and Men­non­ite way of liv­ing while I vis­ited dur­ing the sum­mers. I was intrigued and read as much as I could on their beliefs and prac­tices. I have always won­dered what exactly should be appro­pri­ate dress for peo­ple who are Chris­tians. It seems that most churches of var­i­ous denom­i­na­tions con­cen­trate on many things that affect the soul and preach about how mod­est Chris­tians should con­duct them­selves, but in the area of dress, it seems that peo­ple are not inter­ested. Yet, many peo­ple com­plain about the lack of respect­ful cloth­ing is being made pop­u­lar and avail­able to adults as well as chil­dren. I believe that the way peo­ple dress is a direct reflec­tion on thier val­ues just as the eyes are the win­dow to the soul. I am com­forted to find oth­ers that are con­cerned and are at least look­ing for answeres.

  • H. Sid­diqui

    I am inter­ested to learn more about Beach Amish peo­ple. Can any­one help me locate their church with an address or a phone num­ber in Philadelphia/Lancaster area?
    Thanks.
    Siddiqui

  • Petey

    Hey Mar­tin — it’s Petey from FGC. I have an inter­est­ing insight on this topic, being that I work for a major cloth­ing retai­lor which I can­not name. If we spend so much time try­ing to dress sim­ply, is it really sim­ple any more, or is it just as com­pli­cated as before?
    Sim­plic­ity, in my mind is a com­pre­hen­sive thing — I don’t dress flashy because that’s not quaker style, but I also don’t go around spend­ing a lot of time look­ing for the cheap­est clothes pos­si­ble, when I know my time, as a resource could be put to bet­ter use else­where besides decid­ing what I need to wear. In the process I may end up buy­ing some ques­tion­able clothes — not know­ingly, but still…
    with the time I’ve gained by not thin­ing so much about one aspect of how to live sim­ple I’ve gained time to focus on other aspects, and live a more bal­ac­ned life — a life that focuss not so much on what i’m wear­ing, but what I can do for other peo­ple.
    I work with clothes all the time, I don’t mind shop­ping — it can be fun to see new clothes, but if I spend so much time think­ing about what I’m going to wear I start to feel self-centered and that isn’t the kind of cen­tered that I like to feel. Just my two thoughts.

  • http://www.nonviolence.org/martink Mar­tin Kelley

    Hi Petey, Good to hear from you, thanks for post­ing. I liked what you said about feel­ing self-centered when you spend too much time think­ing about what to wear. I totally relate to that. But you know, plain dress­ing doesn’t need to be com­pli­cated. I spend a lot less time shop­ping for cloth­ing than I did before I started plain dress­ing. It’s not about focus­ing on your­self, it’s about get­ting off your­self. It’s not ask­ing what you want to wear but on what God might want you to wear. How do you adorn the cre­ation and pay trib­ute to the cre­ator?
    We shouldn’t choose plain clothes to try to impress any­one, but we then we prob­a­bly shouldn’t choose worldly clothes try­ing to impress any­one. How many of the prod­ucts of the major cloth­ing retailer you work for are really prac­ti­cal, sim­ple, mod­est and affirm that one’s worth is not based on one’s out­side appear­ance? (I know it’s just a job, but still, the cur­rent fashion/clothing industry’s overzeal­ous­ness is one of the best sec­u­lar ratio­nales for con­tem­po­rary plain dress I know of.

  • hairspray_queen

    yeah.…this is a weird web­site and I am kind of freaked out at the moment. Why are you guys pre­tend­ing to be Quak­ers! Ok…so bye

  • http://www.livejournal.com/users/zach_alexander Zach Alexan­der

    It’s not ask­ing what you want to wear but on what God might want you to wear. How do you adorn the cre­ation and pay trib­ute to the cre­ator?
    Mar­tin, I’ve taken a few steps towards plain dress, and am con­sid­er­ing fur­ther ones, but I must say this rubbed me the wrong way. I think you are right to put the focus on what God would have us wear, and seek­ing to honor him/her in our cloth­ing, but it sounds like you’re sug­ge­set­ing that non-plain dress doesn’t do that. I think gen­er­ally, it doesn’t, but I do know of sev­eral peo­ple who put a lot of energy into their cloth­ing, not (it doesn’t seem) as a vain exer­cise, and wear the most fan­tas­tic, col­or­ful, fun out­fits that make almost every­one they pass smile. Peo­ple like that seem to be adorn­ing cre­ation and pay­ing trib­ute to God at least as much as plain dressers are.

  • http://www.nonviolence.org/martink Mar­tin Kelley

    Hi Zach,
    Well sure, plain dress isn’t a par­tic­u­lar style, color, etc. It’s a atti­tude toward cloth­ing. I have cer­tainly worn a lot of silly out­fits in my day and think that was cer­tainly an early man­i­fes­ta­tion of my cur­rent gray-flavored style. The cur­rent form of my plain­ness is influ­enced by hav­ing taken on the yoke of being a pub­lic Friend and a Friend who is at easy wrestling with our faith tra­di­tion (as Lloyd Lee Wil­son describes in his new book).

  • Robin M.

    For me, the point is that I nei­ther need to hide nor fur­ther adorn the beauty with which God made me. Clothes should be for warmth and health and prac­ti­cal­ity. This is a sim­ple stan­dard for me.

  • Diann Her­zog

    Hi Mar­tin,
    I met you and [Julie] at FGC in LLW’s work­shop. I have been liv­ing in plain dress for a lit­tle over a year, and I have lots of obser­va­tions to share. For me, it was a three year lead­ing that I finally could no longer deny. It has been quite a jour­ney. I am in the process of writ­ing about it now, and will be in touch soon. Bless­ings to all.
    Diann

  • Pam

    Hi
    I’m new here. I have been sort of surf­ing around look­ing for a dis­cus­sion of “plain dress” and, while there’s a lot here, havent’ really found what I wanted to. David seems to have asked some­thing like the ques­tion I wanted to ask, but it doesnt’ seem to have elicited answers as I would have hoped.
    I find myself drawn to plain dress from a dif­fer­ent angle than I per­ceive from most. I have no inter­est in mod­esty and would con­sider nudity as an inter­est­ing form of “sim­ple dress”.
    As a les­bian and a trans ally and a woman who most often buys from the men’s depart­ment, I also have con­cerns about the gen­dered impli­ca­tions of plain dress as it seems most often espoused.
    That said, I have con­cerns about fair trade issues –which loom large in most cloth­ing deci­sions. I believe in not giv­ing power to “labels” and cringe and the fash­ion and expense (as well as the waste and exploita­tion) of Hil­figer, Aber­crom­bie, etc.
    Ann Marie’s con­cern about “mod­esty” res­onates with me. Plain dress ini­tially was sim­ply a sim­pler ver­sion of the going style (was it not? I am not versed in this) — I tend to think the mod­ern equiv­a­lent would be no-name jeans & t-shirts, not bon­nets & such.
    Mod­ern plain dress seems to involve a LOT of thought about what one wears (though I admire the idea of hav­ing only a few sets of clothes, and never hav­i­gng to “choose what to wear” in the morn­ing) — evi­denced to me by the exis­tence of web­sites and yahoo groups about the topic.
    I worry that it involves a sense of see­ing one­self as “bet­ter than”, and also a sort of van­ity
    To me I believe it would be an “empty form” — Maybe that is my prob­lem — so that I have trou­ble see­ing the lead­ing that lies behind it for oth­ers.
    So, I guess my ques­tions are:
    – It has been men­tioned that it is a form of “wit­ness” — what does this mean? “look­ing quaker”? — Is there a hope that peo­ple will ask us about it? will learn some­thing from see­ing us dressed dif­fer­ently? Behind this lies the assump­tion that draw­ing atten­tion to our­selves is a “good” — some­thing that seems in con­flict with “mod­esty”. The assump­tion is that it’s not about that per­son “think­ing we’re cool” — what, then, is it about?
    – What other con­cerns go into it? I dress pretty much exclu­sively from thrift stores, thereby bypass­ing con­cerns about exploited labor (except the work­ers at the thrift stores), resource use, etc. This is impor­tant to me. I would be reluc­tant to buy new clothes, or even fab­ric, because of these con­cerns.
    – The sim­plic­ity of it is what really appeals to me — the vision of hav­ing 3 or 4 out­fits in my closet and wear­ing the same thing every day. I really like col­ors, and I some­what like shop­ping. I am reluc­tant to give up either (and with color, I feel no indi­ca­tion that God doesnt’ like color as much as I do. I doubt I would ever feel led to give it up!) (I dont’ know that that’s a ques­tion!)
    – So, can any­one give a short list of what the “ben­e­fits” have been? How has it changed your world­view? your life? what does the lead­ing feel like, and what does it con­sist of?
    – MINISTRY — that word keeps com­ing back to me. It seems that numer­ous folks think it is a “pow­er­ful min­istry” — and the sense of what that means eludes me almost com­pletely. What are you say­ing through plain dress? (or what do you hope you’re say­ing?) My first thought was that it would set you apart as a paci­fist (are all plain-dressers paci­fists? it seems so to me right now) in a time of war, but so would a t-shirt or bumper stick­ers. I am really yearn­ing to under­stand this point. Maybe it’s sim­ply about wait­ing, but if any­one has any­thing they could share, I would be grateful.

  • Heather

    I live near a large Men­non­ite com­mu­nity in Okla­homa, and fre­quently see a type of plain-dressers (Men­non­ite or other) at our local Wal-Mart. The ladies wear long denim skirts with ten­nis shoes, long-sleeved shirts, and have long hair drawn up in a bun — younger girls wear their hair down. I can’t recall the men — maybe they don’t stand out as much, or don’t do the shop­ping! But as for these plainly dressed women and their daugh­ters, they are Prac­ti­cal (denim, ten­nis shoes), Mod­est (long skirts, dis­re­gard for ‘fash­ion’), and Fem­i­nine (long hair, skirts). Nei­ther do they wear jew­elry, bar­rettes, braids, nor (I think) makeup. This is the plain dress that I admire, for its mod­ern sen­si­bil­ity above all else. The online prairie dresses and old-style boots are very expen­sive. I am per­son­ally drawn to mod­est, fem­i­nine, prac­ti­cal cloth­ing for how it encour­ages me to con­duct myself. To me, it’s not so much about look­ing dif­fer­ent as it is shame­lessly liv­ing by those ideals.

  • Katrin

    I’m not even a Chris­t­ian, but nev­erth­less, I’ve taken inter­est to plain dress (which no one in my coun­try really prac­tices). My wardrobe already looks quite plain, and I’m plan­ning to go fur­ther still. I’ve been think­ing these mat­ters a lot and am shar­ing my thoughts in hopes that you will find them help­ful.
    Most impor­tant things in plain­ness to me are free­dom and peace of mind . A “nor­mal” mod­ern way is to think exces­sively of one’s out­ward appear­ance. When one makes a con­scious rea­son not to care of all the things that media tells her to care of, it will soon become obvi­ous that she has great resources to redi­rect to some bet­ter activ­ity. When I think of how I look, my thoughts are dis­tracted. Plain­ness means to me free­ing myself of need to think my appear­ance exces­sively.
    I agree with those who say that out­ward appear­ance reflects what is inside. What we wear is always a mes­sage that we send to oth­ers, and it always effects in some way on how we are eval­u­ated. Today’s fash­ion empha­sizes sex­u­al­ity, “bold­ness” and finan­cial suc­cess. All these are things that I oppose. Instead, I wish my dress to pro­claim that my val­ues are dif­fer­ent: dig­nity, love for wis­dom, self-respect and impor­tance of inner beauty. It has become very clear to me, that if I wish to express these qual­i­ties, I must go plainer.
    I don’t believe that we can approach this ques­tions by mak­ing lists of “good” and “bad” clothes. The mat­ter is just not that sim­ple. Instead, I believe that we are bet­ter off if we ask our­selves when mak­ing deci­sions “Does this piece of cloth­ing reflect the val­ues that I want to pro­mote in my life?” “Does wear­ing this gar­ment sup­port or dis­tract me in my effort to became a bet­ter per­son?”. When we put ques­tions this way, we see that the real issue isn’t whether we should buy a Volvo or BMW. If motive for our want­ing an expen­sive car is, that such a car is nec­es­sary in per­form­ing our duties and it isn’t con­flict­ing our val­ues, then it’s all ok to buy a good, expen­sive car. But, if we could really do with a less flam­boy­ant car –that is, if our true moti­va­tion for want­ing an expen­sive car isn’t need but our love of lux­ury or pride– then our buy­ing that car isn’t good.
    So, what’s plain dress­ing to me at the moment.
    –Style: A mod­est style that doesn’t draw atten­tion to my body or doesn’t appear as sex­ual is what I’m after.
    –Color: Bright col­ors and pat­terns draw atten­tion– that of oth­ers nat­u­rally, but I have also noticed that I’m more aware of my appear­ance if I wear bright col­ors. So, my wardrobe con­sists mainly of whites, blacks, browns and grays.
    –Prac­ti­cal­ity: Prac­ti­cal­ity means, that I seek to ful­fill my cloth­ing needs sim­ply and buy­ing new clothes when I really need them, not just because fash­ion has changed. So far I’ve bought all my cloth­ing, but I’m plan­ning to learn to sew.
    –Qual­ity: If a piece of cloth­ing fits to my other stan­dards and is a qual­ity item, I may buy it. I don’t admire cheap stuff that is badly made from fab­rics that don’t last. I try to be a con­sid­er­ing shop­per and buy clothes that have such qual­ity that I can expect to wear them a long time.
    –Sim­plic­ity: I find that besides col­ors, also pat­terns, cuts and orna­ments can make a cloth not suit­able for my needs. Also exces­sive use of jew­elry goes in here. I appre­ci­ate beauty and have no objec­tion for wear­ing jew­elry in gen­eral– but I’m against “fash­ion jew­elry”- jew­elry that is meant for dec­o­ra­tion only and has no “mean­ing” besides giv­ing tem­po­rary plea­sure to wearer.
    I wear my hair long and bunned– also because sim­plic­ity. A long hair needs less car­ing than a short hair, and a bun is neat and sim­ple style, that doesn’t con­form with beauty stan­dards made by salon industry.

  • http://www.riemermann.com James Riemer­mann

    I won­der, has any­one expressed the thought that a more gen­uine trans­la­tion of tra­di­tional Quaker “plain dress” might be cheap and ser­vice­able ordi­nary clothes from the local thrift shop? I’ve been get­ting most of my clothes that way since, well, since my Jew­ish Dad first took me to the Good­will as a lit­tle tyke. It never would have occurred me to call it “plain dress.” For the past cou­ple years I’ve been shav­ing my head in the bath­room with a bar­ber clip­per and a 3/4-inch attach­ment. My rea­son­ing was, I don’t want to pay for hair­cuts or sham­poo any more. I’m cheap and lazy.
    My tes­ti­mony is, cheap and lazy deserves more respect than it gets.

  • Matt Bow­er­man

    I have won­dered about plain dress for years now. I am return­ing to the Quaker way of life, as it is a fam­ily faith going back to Barn­sta­ble, MA in 1623 for us Bowermans/Bourmans. I have found the com­ments on this page to be very help­ful.
    God Bless you all,
    Matthew Bowerman

  • Karen

    Hello!
    I’ve been slowly mov­ing toward plain/modest dress for awhile now, although i’ve never been par­tic­u­lary flashy (i.e., I’ve never worn skirts above the knee or any­thing low cut). I’m a Chris­t­ian but not offi­cially Quaker, largely because there are no groups close by. I attend the Methodist church I was raised attend­ing. I love its open-minded, accept­ing, peace-loving struc­ture of beliefs.
    That said, I feel drawn to Plain Dress for a rea­son I’d like an opin­ion on. Because of my spir­i­tu­al­ity, I see it as a way to retreat from an ever more aggres­sive, intrud­ing world. I’m mar­ried and i am not a prude with my hus­band, but lately I feel like he’s the only per­son who should see my legs or other parts of me. Also, I feel so out of touch with so much around me that I feel like I want to put a bar­rier between my body and the world. I’m drawn toward wear­ing sim­ple, floor-length skirts and dresses, plain blouses that cover my elbows.
    Does any­one have feed­back, ever felt some­thing sim­i­lar, have any rec­om­men­da­tions for tran­si­tion­ing to so modest/plain a style? FWIW, I am a tech­ni­cal writer who lives and works in Cal­i­for­nia. The peo­ple I work with will accept me no mat­ter what, but most will not “get it.“
    Thanks in advance,
    Karen

  • Dave L

    I am a Plain Quaker. It sems to me that too many are wor­ried about the “appear­ance” of being “plain” on the out­side to show the world how much you abhor the greed and excess. Take more time to look inside, and be a plain per­son from the inside out. Don’t worry about how you look, but lead by exam­ple about how you live.

  • Brian

    It seems to me that a lot of peo­ple are mis­un­der­stand­ing the lead­ings of oth­ers. The deci­sion for an indi­vid­ual to dress plainly, in this con­text, is not entirely theirs. Many of the com­ments express con­cern that those wear­ing plain dress are overly con­cerned with out­ward appear­ance. Tak­ing a few hours to pick 3 out­fits to be worn until they can no longer be worn is indeed a good way to save time that might oth­er­wise have been spent shop­ping over the years. What’s more, the few hours taken to pick out those 3 out­fits leaves plenty of time for inner plain­ness. In early Quaker prac­tice some cloth­ing was seen as an encum­brance. Today, a Quaker is respon­si­ble for choos­ing his/her cloth­ing with spir­i­tual guid­ance based on the things that they expe­ri­ence as being encum­brances in their lives. This will free an indi­vid­ual to become more spir­i­tu­ally con­nected and allow them to bet­ter lead by example.

  • Steve Nabazas

    I have lived my life in a sec­u­lar envi­ron­ment. My best friend passed away last year. He was against mate­ri­al­ism. It was his per­sonal philosopy, not tied to a reli­gion. He believed in God. He had been ill for years. He was too proud to take aid. In his final years he died in poverty and home­less.
    For years I have nei­ther worn a belt and rarely a tie. It was the way I was most com­fort­able dress­ing.
    Recently I decided it made no sense to buy pants with belt loops. The only place I could find the style I wanted was re-enactment com­mu­nity and peo­ple that dressed plain.
    After liv­ing with and work­ing with the home­less and recent events in world events I am tak­ing a paci­fist lean­ing in my thoughts. I am a bit shocked that peo­ple have no prob­lem buy­ing from com­pa­nies they know use child labor or slave labor for the sake of fash­ion.
    I believe fam­ily busi­ness and cot­tage indus­try is more hon­est and vir­tu­ous form of busi­ness struc­ture. Cor­po­rate struc­tures think noth­ing of putting peo­ple in harms way or mak­ing deci­sions that they know will harm chil­dren and seniors.
    In my search for cloth­ing that suited my tastes I real­ized that even though I could get cloth­ing that suited my needs from re-enactors I did not wish to glo­rify wars. Past or present. I have been drawn more and more to those that dress plain. This does some­times draw atten­tion to myself. I am not really com­fort­able with this. So yes, plain dress can draw as much atten­tion to a per­son as dress that is not mod­est. I think dress­ing out­side of any of society’s “norms” what­ever they may be will bring the risk of atten­tion. It may or may not be wanted. I think that is the key. Is the style of dress reflect­ing a love of God and your fel­low man?
    I am not try­ing to be plain, Amish, Men­non­ite, Quaker, Shaker or any­thing else. I am try­ing to be me. I have found these clothes wear well, seem good for most occa­sions, are com­fort­able, and make a state­ment of MY per­sonal beliefs. I know an adult made them and was paid a fair com­pen­sa­tion and paid taxes into his or her com­mu­nity and sup­ported the youth of their com­mu­nity.
    In study­ing the ways of these groups I have learned vol­umes. They are not plain and sim­ple. The tech­nol­ogy is sophis­ti­cated and inge­nious. It serves a pur­pose and is in gen­eral in bal­ance with nature and soci­ety.
    I always try not to wear all plain clothes because I am not of that com­mu­nity. If I wear a few selected items I feel I am mak­ing a state­ment of thanks. It is a salute to them and the con­tri­bu­tion they make to our com­mu­nity and our con­science. To wear all plain cloth­ing I feel I may offend some­one I admire very much. I don’t wish to do that or make them think I am mock­ing them.
    More and more I am slowly learn­ing to make and repair my own. I am becom­ing more self suf­fi­cient by a study of these meth­ods. If we rely more on our­selves and our com­mu­nity there is less chance of con­flict. Espe­cially when we enter into trade with cul­tures that are dif­fer­ent than ours that are hard to under­stand.
    Pos­si­bly I am just grow­ing older. When I see young men and women in the lat­est fash­ions fol­lowed by men and women that dress plain, some­how the lat­ter group looks much bet­ter. It is bet­ter to carry your riches in your heart than on your cloth­ing.
    With respect
    Steve Nabazas

  • Rebekah Wal­ton

    I would love to wear plain long dresses. And I under­stand the impor­tance of being mod­est. I try to be mod­est wear­ing the longest skirts I have with me to church. They are not ankle length but they are not too short like those fancy skirts most kids wear now.They are about kneel length. Do you know wear I could get some dressses or skirts that are about to my feet? rebekah_28@hotmail.com

  • The Revd. oon­agh Ryan-King

    I have, I think, THE MOST respect for Quak­ers and Men­non­ites because of their social jus­tice work. We lived in the Repub­lic of Panama for three years and AS GOD AS MY WITNESS, I will NEVER, EVER live any­place with­out Quak­ers, Men­non­ites, Jesuits, and with­out a gay bar closer than 4.5 hours!

    And I can­NOT wrap my brain around a social jus­tice per­son shop­ping at Wal-Mart. I know, I HAVE been known to actu­ally SHOP at a WM but ONLY because of some­thing that was a neces­sity and I had burned up more than 1/2 tank of gas search­ing for par­tic­u­lar item. I even have a tshirt dress that says, “As a Xan, I oppose the labor prac­tices of W-M; I am here today because I could find it nowhere else and it is impor­tant that I get this item NOW.” Like when some­thing plumb­ing wise breaks at 3AM and WM’s the only thing open and the bath­room and house are going to flood.… or the grand­baby has a fever and a tepid sponge­bath won’t keep it down and it’s not high enough to go to the doc­tor and the clos­est 24 What­ever RX is ten miles away and WM is 4 minutes.

    I am not a Quaker ONLY because I love liturgy. And now we’re back in the US and in MS (Mis­sis­sippi) where the only known and pro­claimed Quak­ers are in Starkville and Oxford (both huge uni­ver­sity towns) and no one will respond to my emails because even though I’m a priest, some­times I really NEED a meeting.

    I wear a LOT of plain dress because I find it beau­ti­ful. There are pat­terns. I can make them. And they fit. If my cloth­ing is NOT plain dress specif­i­cally, then it’s pretty plain. I’ve always liked a sim­ple look, not sim­ple in a bad way, but sim­ple in a good way. AND dress­ing plain and sim­ple CHANGES one; espe­cially if one is using a Quaker/Plain/Mennonite pat­tern. It does good stuff to me spir­i­tu­ally, so that mak­ing cloth­ing becomes a sacred med­i­ta­tion, like mak­ing vest­ments. In fact I tweaked a plain pat­tern for my cler­i­cal dress with a col­lar. I LOVE fab­u­lous fab­ric and every 3rd year, if I find some­thing on super­sale and fab­u­lous, fabric-wise, I buy it and make another plain dress.

  • http://www.sunglassesuk.com/Dior_Sunglasses.asp Dior Sun­glasses

    i never like plain dress ever coz it looks lonely and not attractive.

  • kat­va­lente

    I con­sider plain dress to be dress that is aligned with the tes­ti­monies of sim­plic­ity and mod­er­a­tion. I buy as much of my cloth­ing (and other house­hold items) as I can from thrift stores. In that way, I am keep­ing an item that took phys­i­cal, human and energy resources in cir­cu­la­tion, rather than bring­ing another item into our already over-crowded world and using fresh resources to pro­duce it. I buy sim­ple, well made clothes which I then take care of so they will last even longer. A “plain” dress that costs $300 or was made in a sweat shop is not in keep­ing with my under­stand­ing of the testimonies.

  • Schilderesje

    I was in Chicago this sum­mer and saw a group of Amish women and their chil­dren in plain dress. they came to me as mod­ern women of today, the only dif­fer­ence are their clothes. I find their clothes attrac­tive because it is sim­ple and shows peo­ple that clothes are only a shell. I do not see it as a uni­form but as a state­ment, some­thing that Mus­lim women also choose here in the Nether­lands, wear­ing a head­scarf a major debate. I think it has lit­tle to do with reli­gion but it has to do with tol­er­ance com­pared with oth­ers groups.

  • Verymer­ry­marie

    I dress plain, very plain. I have never been the focus of atten­tion because I dress plainly in a way that fits in. Exam­ble: Dur­ing the cold win­ter I wear sim­ple tai­lored long sleeved dresses in a wool blend of a solid color, slightly below the calf, with black tights and flat well kept loafers or pumps, with no bling of any kind. I work in a law office. My hair is always pulled back into a neat bun, and I do wear col­or­less lip gloss and keep my brows neat. Good groom­ing is not counter to plain­ess. In the warmer weather I wear solid color shifts with a gauzy elbow lenth t shirt under­neath or a solid color very plain shift type dress with quar­ter length sleeves in a sum­mer fab­ric that has a bit of integrity. One does not have to go about in flour sack type prairie dresses to be plain. All of my dresses have invis­i­ble zip­pers. I do not use but­tons in any form as I like to honor those who are gone and eschewed but­tons as at that time they were usu­ally expen­sive and dec­o­ra­tive. I also don’t loose a minute of this good life over miss­ing but­tons.
    Being plain has been noticed, but very rar­ily. It usu­ally takes the form of being asked why I don’t wear a wed­ding ring, even though I am mar­ried. I can explain in two small sentinces and every­one gets it.
    When one is not con­cerned about pick­ing out cloth­ing from the exces­sive plethora of mostly idi­otic and vul­gar design, one has a lot more time for issues that are of use­ful impor­tance, such as fundrais­ing for wor­thy causes, which is my case, and being on use­ful com­mit­tees. Dig­nity is another nice ben­e­fit of dress­ing plainly, along with respect.

  • http://www.domain-hosting-services.in/ Domain host­ing services

    This first time when i am using this blog and i like to get this type of infor­ma­tion. And i love plain dresses. Because plain dresses made a dif­fer­ent impact on our character.

  • http://www.mactonweb.com/ Web design London

    I am not try­ing to be plain, Amish, Men­non­ite, Quaker, Shaker or any­thing else. I am try­ing to be me. I have found these clothes wear well, seem good for most occa­sions, are com­fort­able, and make a state­ment of MY per­sonal beliefs.

  • http://www.mactonweb.com/ Web design London

    I agree with those who say that out­ward appear­ance reflects what is inside. What we wear is always a mes­sage that we send to oth­ers, and it always effects in some way on how we are eval­u­ated. Today’s fash­ion empha­sizes sex­u­al­ity, “bold­ness” and finan­cial suc­cess. All these are things that I oppose. Instead, I wish my dress to pro­claim that my val­ues are dif­fer­ent: dig­nity, love for wis­dom, self-respect and impor­tance of inner beauty.