A guest piece from Rob of “Con­sider the Lillies”:http://consider-the-lilies.blogspot.com/
Rob describes him­self: “I’m a twenty-something gay Mid-western expa­tri­ate liv­ing in Boston. I was inspired to begin a blog based on the writ­ings of other urban Quaker blog­gers as they reflect and dis­cuss their inward faith and out­ward expe­ri­ences. When I’m not read­ing or writ­ing, I’m usu­ally with my friends, trav­el­ing about, and/or gen­er­ally mak­ing an arse of myself.”

As of late, I’ve been led to con­sider my out­ward appear­ance and how I choose to dress. With­out elab­o­rat­ing on that lead­ing in this post­ing (per­haps later), I have given much thought to cloth­ing and dress gen­er­ally. How we dress com­mu­ni­cates a great deal to oth­ers about ourselves—whether or not it’s our inten­tion.
The vain among us put a great deal of empha­sis on our clothes and obsess about what it may say to oth­ers about our phys­i­cal or social traits: “Am I hot, or am I not? Do I look smart with these glasses? Do these pants make my butt look big?” The secretly vain (per­haps every­one else) tend to avoid the topic lest they might have to inwardly admit that they are in the for­mer cat­e­gory. Even if we tell our­selves that we don’t mean to com­mu­ni­cate much of any­thing by our attire, it’s cer­tainly true that oth­ers under­stand our clothes to be say­ing some­thing about us. Let us begin the con­ver­sa­tion there to avoid deter­min­ing whether we are out­right vain or just secretly vain.
Cloth­ing com­mu­ni­cates many things about us includ­ing per­cep­tions of age, sex, class, and wealth. Cloth­ing can stereo­type us as urban or rural; cool or uncool (a sub­jec­tive mea­sure, of course); hip or hope­lessly out of fash­ion. Some exam­ples: when I wear my best suit to work, I sense that I get a higher level of respect than when I dress more casu­ally. When I go out for a night on the town, I pick my “New York” shoes to con­vey a cer­tain cos­mopoli­tan image. Also, when I wear my coat col­lar stand­ing up, it says some­thing dif­fer­ent than when I wear my col­lar flat. In what instances do you dress dif­fer­ently to empha­size a dif­fer­ent part of your­self?
On evenings and week­ends, I tend to wear the same clothes: a logo-free long-sleeve shirt, cor­duroy pants and a pair of retro-like sneak­ers. I do it because it’s com­fort­able and it’s easy; I always know what to wear, and I get to avoid the dreaded deed of shopping—something I really dis­like. (It also means that I do laun­dry more often!)
Even though I tend to wear that same set of clothes out­side of work, that deci­sion says more than that I sim­ply don’t care that my clothes are always the same. The out­fit com­mu­ni­cates a great deal more: One is just as likely to see a man wear­ing cords, retro sneak­ers and a logo-free long-sleeve shirt as one is a woman. Per­haps my clothes com­mu­ni­cate androg­yny. Maybe they say that I’m an urban dweller—a lit­tle bit of a hip­ster, but not too much. Per­haps they say that I’m cheap. What­ever they com­mu­ni­cate, I think it’s fair to say that they say some­thing to oth­ers. Once I admit that my clothes indeed say some­thing, I can get past my dis­com­fort (I must be secretly vain) and talk about it openly. Who is the per­son that I’m called to be and how am I out­wardly led to embody those qual­i­ties? Through actions, yes, but through dress?
Plain dress, while a state­ment in and of itself, com­mu­ni­cates faith, com­mit­ment to that faith, and Oth­er­ness. It set a per­son apart dif­fer­ently than other forms of dress. When prompted by an inner spir­i­tual lead­ing, plain dress isn’t sim­ply the other side of the “cool coin.” It doesn’t vary by day or cir­cum­stance, and to some, plain dress is rather ugly. How­ever, plain dress stands for some­thing much dif­fer­ent than a rejec­tion of our cul­tural ideals of beauty and viril­ity. It is an embrace of one’s inner spirit and mak­ing that spirit and that faith an out­ward sym­bol.
To me, plain dress would serve as a daily reminder of a com­mit­ment to lead a more Chris­t­ian and Quaker life. If I were to dress plain, I would have to sac­ri­fice my cool­ness (for lack of a bet­ter word) and wear plain, and rather unex­cit­ing clothes. I wouldn’t have the lux­ury of dress­ing for dif­fer­ent audi­ences and cir­cum­stances depend­ing on my moti­va­tions. In essence, I would out­wardly com­mu­ni­cate that I am a Quaker first, a per­son liv­ing each moment in the spirit and in the Light, and every­thing else sec­ond. Plain dress would serve as a reminder to me and oth­ers that I aspire to live toward God and in the foot­steps of Jesus in all places, at all times, and in every cir­cum­stance.
What an empow­er­ing thought! It is a tremen­dous lead­ing for any­one to hear and one worth seek­ing greater discernment.