Plain Dress – Some Reflections

A guest piece by Melynda Huskey

I’ve been much afflict­ed on the sub­ject of plain dress for the last sev­er­al months, thanks to Thomas Clark­son. Clark­son, a British Abo­li­tion­ist and close, even fond, observ­er of Friends, wrote a three-volume dis­qui­si­tion on Quak­er tes­ti­monies, cul­ture, and behav­ior (in 1811, if my mem­o­ry serves me). There’s a lot in Clark­son to think about, but his sec­tion on Quak­er garb was par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing to me. Not because I intend to take up a green apron any time soon (did you know that was a badge of Quak­er wom­an­hood for near­ly two cen­turies?), but because he pro­vides what a present-day anthro­pol­o­gist would describe as a func­tion­al­ist analy­sis of the mean­ing of plain dress: it served as a badge of mem­ber­ship, keep­ing its wear­ers pecu­liar and in vis­i­ble com­mu­nion with one anoth­er, while com­mu­ni­cat­ing a core val­ue of the tradition.

When I was a kid, I yearned for plain dress like the kids in Oba­di­ah’s fam­i­ly wore. I loved the idea of a Quak­er uni­form and could­n’t imag­ine why we did­n’t still have one. When­ev­er I asked my mom about it, she would patient­ly explain that an out­ward con­for­mi­ty in plain dress called atten­tion to itself as much as any world­ly out­fit did, and that Quak­ers should dress as plain­ly as was suit­able and pos­si­ble to their work in the world. It made sense, but I was still sorry.

And now, at near­ly 40, after 35 years of bal­anc­ing my con­vic­tions and my world, I’m still han­ker­ing after a tru­ly dis­tinc­tive and Quak­er­ly plain­ness. What isn’t any clear­er to me is what that might look like now.
After all, what are the options? Accord­ing to my part­ner, the dis­tinc­tive ele­ments of con­tem­po­rary Quak­er garb are high-water pants for Friends over 40 and grimy hands and feet for Friends under 40. This obvi­ous­ly jaun­diced view aside, there does­n’t seem to be much to dis­tin­guish Friends from, say, Methodists, Uni­tar­i­ans, or mem­bers of the local food co-op. A lit­tle den­im, a lit­tle kha­ki, some suede sport mocs, some san­dals and funky socks, batik and chunky jew­el­ry. It’s not obvi­ous­ly world­ly, but it’s not set apart, either. There is no tes­ti­mo­ny in our cur­rent dress.

On the oth­er hand, any­thing too vis­i­bly a cos­tume obvi­ous­ly isn’t right; I can’t appro­pri­ate the Men­non­ite dress-and-prayer-cap, for exam­ple. And my heart ris­es up against the whole range of “mod­est” cloth­ing present­ly avail­able – flo­ral prairie dress­es and pinafores, sailor dress­es, den­im jumpers, and head cov­er­ings – all with nurs­ing aper­tures and mater­ni­ty inserts, and mar­ket­ed by com­pa­nies with ter­ri­fy­ing names like “Dad­dy’s Lit­tle Princess,” “King’s Daugh­ters,” and “Lilies of the Field.” No Prairie Madon­na drag for me. No messy, time-consuming, attention-requiring long hair; no end­less sup­ply of tights and nylons and slips; no cold legs in the win­ter snow and ice. No squeez­ing myself into a gen­der ide­ol­o­gy which was for­eign to Friends from the very beginning.

It seems to me that con­tem­po­rary plain dress ought to be dis­tinc­tive with­out being the­atri­cal; it should be prac­ti­cal and self-effacing. It should be pro­duced under non-exploitive con­di­tions. It should be the same every day, with­out vari­a­tion intro­duced for the sake of vari­a­tion, and suit­able for every occa­sion It should be tidy and well-kept – Quak­ers were once known for the scrupu­lous neat­ness of their attire and their homes. And it should com­mu­ni­cate clear­ly that we are called and set apart.

But what gar­ments they might be that would accom­plish that, I can­not say. I’m stymied. Friends, share your light.


*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.

13 thoughts on “Plain Dress – Some Reflections

  1. Hi Melyn­da: I cer­tain­ly under­stand wor­ry­ing about what our style might trans­mit to the world; I’ve edit­ed my wardrobe because of peo­ple’s unex­pect­ed com­ments. Plain dress is trick­i­er for women, with the whole pol­i­tics of patri­archy and fem­i­nism to deal with. That said, nurs­ing aper­tures can be very con­ve­nient and the King’s Daugh­ters have made some very nice clothes for Julie.
    Your post focus­es on plain dress as a kind of iden­ti­fi­able uni­form, which is cer­tain­ly one func­tion it can play. But you did­n’t talk about the whole obe­di­ence issue. Here’s a sce­nario for you: What if the spir­it of Christ came down and told you to wear some­thing real­ly real­ly dorky, some­thing so prairie that it would make his­tor­i­cal rein­ac­tors blush? What if all Quak­er women band­ed togeth­er to declare the den­im jumper our twenty-first cen­tu­ry plain dress uni­form? Would you wear it?
    Where’s the line between indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and cor­po­rate wit­ness and between obe­di­ence and embar­ras­ment? I’m real­ly ask­ing, I’m not sure myself! I do know I don’t want a uni­form that peo­ple don uncon­scious­ly, that the last thing we need is anoth­er way to be out­ward­ly right­eous but inward­ly false.

    1. I don’t know how I end­ed up on this page, but became inter­est­ed in your col­umn and the replies because being from a Cha­sidic Jew­ish fam­i­ly, we have always dressed mod­est­ly and sim­ply (though we women do dress up for wed­dings). We con­sid­er van­i­ty as some­thing that reduces the atten­tion we can give to G‑d. Clothes are not for attract­ing and should not embar­rass oth­ers by showing-off our own wealth or fash­ion knowl­edge— but should be clean and neat, and mod­est. Some men do adopt the same dress as their Rab­bi as a show of respect but most just wear black and white. Women can wear col­ors but should still focus on mod­esty not style. But we nev­er con­sid­er uni­form dress which would sim­ply stress our dif­fer­ences: who afford­ed bet­ter fab­ric or tai­lor­ing, who had a dif­fi­cul­ty with fit­ting the style (ala the infa­mous brides­maid dress­es in mod­ern soci­ety), who had more of each item, etc. With­out a uni­form, each can buy or make what they like and can afford and what fits well while focus­ing on mod­esty and func­tion­al­i­ty. When we pray, we must read the prayer aloud, not recit­ing by heart or silent­ly. This means we are forced to be con­scious of every word — an overt dec­la­ra­tion of our faith with every syl­la­ble — but we’re not robots, just recit­ing the same mem­o­rized prayer. Cloth­ing is sim­i­lar. Mod­esty, yes, which shows our shared faith. But we’re each cre­at­ed as an indi­vid­ual with­in that shared faith. Any­way, I found the sub­ject you dis­cuss very inter­est­ing even though I am not of your faith or even Christian.

      1. Hi Reva, how­ev­er you found an almost-20 year old post but I’m glad you did. There are a lot of cul­tures that have adopt­ed plain dress inde­pen­dent­ly. I like your descrip­tion of a plain style that also main­tains some indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. That seems like a good balance!

  2. Mar­tin, your ques­tion about obe­di­ence is a pro­found one. I hope with all my heart that if Christ said to me, “Put on your sailor dress and fol­low me,” that I would­n’t think twice before I donned the garb. And if, through some dis­cern­ment process that was faith­ful to the lead­ings of the Spir­it, den­im jumpers became the green aprons of the 21st cen­tu­ry, I’d put on my jumper along with the sis­ters with a hum­ble heart and even rejoice in it.
    In fact, that would make things a lot eas­i­er, would­n’t it? What’s miss­ing in my own reflec­tions on this sub­ject is the cor­po­rate dis­cern­ment that might keep me hon­est: my sin­gu­lar deci­sions about what clothes I wear sim­ply can­not reflect a shared tes­ti­mo­ny of the Soci­ety. And that’s what I want to find in not just plain dress, but in every tes­ti­mo­ny as we enact them: my light – aug­ment­ed, clar­i­fied, reflect­ed, cor­rect­ed – in a com­mu­ni­ty that’s seek­ing to be faith­ful to the Spir­it in every way. Not a stale his­tori­cism, not a notion­al flit­ting from fad to fad, but a dynam­ic tra­di­tion­al­ism that is ground­ed in a sta­ble, flex­i­ble, intel­li­gent under­stand­ing of God’s revealed will.
    I sure­ly did­n’t mean to offend Julie – or any­one – with my com­ments about “The King’s Daugh­ters.” I just can’t pic­ture a web­site sell­ing white shirts and black pants that would call itself “The King’s Sons” or “Jesus’s Lit­tle Princes,” and I think the infan­tiliz­ing and his­tori­ciz­ing impuls­es of those busi­ness­es speaks to the ways in which plain dress is loaded for 21st cen­tu­ry women.
    The plain dress of 18th- and 19th-century women Friends was rea­son­ably con­tem­po­rary, if not fash­ion­able – and it updat­ed itself (slow­ly and carefully)in response to chang­ing fash­ions. It also addressed issues of jus­tice. In putting aside all my jew­el­ry (not that there was much!), I am faith­ful to a scrip­tur­al man­date to avoid those adorn­ments, but I am also mind­ful of the destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al world and the exploita­tion of min­ers and oth­er work­ers that is required to pro­duce such jew­el­ry. (Nev­er­the­less, I still wear my wed­ding band!)
    Plain cloth­ing ought, at the very least, to be pro­duced with­out exploit­ing oth­ers – so the sim­plic­i­ty and cheap­ness of Wal­mart and many oth­er mass-produced clothes is out. I may have to spend more, have less, and take much more care with it. It should reflect con­tem­po­rary cloth­ing, be prac­ti­cal for what I do, and give a silent but omni-present tes­ti­mo­ny. And it should also free me from think­ing about what I’ve got on all the time.
    It may come down to khakis and plain tee-shirts, socks and plain shoes – and a gray dress for funer­als, wed­dings, school pro­grams, and oth­er fes­tal occasions.
    At least, that’s where I seem to be head­ed. I notice that, although I am bur­dened on this sub­ject, I have not received a lead­ing that I have any clar­i­ty about. In fact, I’m using this con­ver­sa­tion as a kind of impromp­tu Clear­ness Com­mit­tee. Thanks!
    Love,
    Melynda

  3. Hey Melyn­da,
    Just a thought: What if we were to turn this whole thing on its head? What I mean is, what if we were to assume that God want­ed us to dress plain­ly and mod­est­ly, unless we heard a direct call from Him to the con­trary? If it was me, I’d want to err on the side of cau­tion, dress plainly/modestly, and tru­ly “exper­i­ment” with this hunch. Then, if it became clear to me that this was com­plete­ly wrong after a fair peri­od of time, I could go back to my old ways. But it seems to me that we could look at this whole thing from the oth­er way around. Just a thought.
    Julie

  4. I start­ed plain dress­ing qui­et­ly, with­out fan­fare. Actu­al­ly even I did­n’t real­ize at first that my desire to clear out my wardrobe of rat­ty jeans, etc., might be the­o­log­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant. It was only after I spent a week with some con­scious plain dressers at the 2002 FGC Gath­er­ing that I was able to name this impulse. For the first month, the dress was just black pants. I was test­ing the lead­ing by doing it. Only one per­son real­ly seemed to notice until the sus­penders came on (for men this is real­ly all you need to have “the look”).
    One thing I noticed as I start­ed plain dress­ing was that a lot more Quak­ers do it than I had real­ized. Most don’t call it that, but it’s obvi­ous that the tra­di­tion lives on in our col­lec­tive sub­con­scious­ness once you know the clues to look for. Some of it is more than a lit­tle embar­ras­ing. I may not wear a den­im jumper but I did start wear­ing a rather-dorky Tilley hat after real­iz­ing this is part of an under­ground, often uncon­scious, plain dress uni­form (I still cringe when a cer­tain type of sixty-something sees me and cries “Is that a Tilley hat! I have a Tilley hat! I love my Tilley hat!”)
    I don’t think the final “uni­form” is impor­tant (as I under­stand, for much of our his­to­ry we did­n’t have spe­cif­ic dress codes; I want to see Clark­son’s account as I think he was prob­a­bly refer­ring to a par­tic­u­lar class/moment). What mat­ters is the wrestling between the Spir­it, tra­di­tion and our own self-will. This work stretch­es our dis­cern­ment mus­cles & gets us ready to hear God’s call in oth­er arenas.

  5. Hel­lo,
    My hus­band and I ( for­mer Catholics) were heav­i­ly con­vict­ed some 8 yrs ago to go to a local Quak­er church and even­tu­al­ly we did and while there the Lord opened our eyes and gave us under­stand­ing of the Scrip­tures and we were saved. We grew quick­ly in the Word and began to feel the church was­n’t very Bib­li­cal, so we end­ed up vis­it­ing some 50 church­es before the Lord led us back to our orig­i­nal Quak­er church. My hus­band has acknowl­edged recent­ly the call to preach and our pas­tor is encour­ag­ing. Any­how, we have been mov­ing toward Plain liv­ing for 3- 4 yrs now. I do dress mod­est­ly, cov­er my head, and he wears a beard (the dress is only a part of what Plain liv­ing is about for us). We don’t believe in man­dat­ing dress codes, but there needs to be some stan­dards, though we should not infringe on the Holy Spir­it’s ter­ri­to­ry in this regard. But the reveal­ing cloth­ing of many peo­ple who say they are chris­tians can­not pos­si­bly be the result of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with God! And we feel a sort of need to call the Quak­ers back to the Old Paths; the paths steeped in Scrip­ture ( you will agree, I am sure, that Bib­li­cal illit­er­a­cy is ram­pant. Noone seems to have time and that HAS to change for peo­ple to grow in the Lord.). My hus­band has been very moved by the tes­ti­monies of Fox, though he and I do not agree with him on every­thing. Our appear­ance seems to be a part of this over­all wit­ness, but exact­ly what it is to be we have not fig­ured out total­ly! I would pre­fer to be iden­ti­fied with oth­er Anabap­tist groups, but for now I wear sim­ple skirts, shirts, and ker­chiefs. I am not dowdy, but neat and pre­sentable. But I am very inter­est­ed in cape dress­es and aprons. I do have a cou­ple of bon­net type cov­er­ings com­ing which are not at all like the Amish or Men­no’s. I am glad to find this site, and I had not found much on Quak­er cloth­ing. I had found some evi­dence a while back that the Men­non­ites got their cloth­ing ideas from the Quak­ers. I do think the Con­ner Prairie site has some inter­est­ing info on ear­ly Quak­erIndi­ana settlers.
    Blessings!
    Joanie

  6. Hi Melyn­da ~ I’m fair­ly new to Quak­erism, hav­ing become con­vinced about two years ago. A plain and sim­ple life was but one thing that drew me to Friends, and I’ve strug­gled with the issues you write about ever since. I feel the need for mod­est dress and a cov­er, but when I have tried to adopt some of what seems to be “out there,” I’ve end­ed up feel­ing like a fraud or a pseudo-Mennonite. That seems to vio­late every­thing Friends stand for, so like many oth­ers, I’m at a loss for what to do. But I’ll be fol­low­ing oth­ers’ com­ments eager­ly. Bless­ings to you ~ Anita

  7. Have you seen the pho­to of Jane on her head­cov­er­ing page of the Plain Jane website.
    I think she looks beau­ti­ful, sim­ple, mod­est and some­how very Quak­er in what she is wear­ing. I my self wear most­ly den­im jumpers, a turtle­neck and a small match­ing ker­chief because that is the type of Mod­est dress that my hus­band prefers.
    Mary-in-Philly
    http://​www​.quak​er​jane​.com/​s​p​i​r​i​t​.​f​r​i​e​n​d​s​/​p​l​a​i​n​_​d​r​e​s​s​-​c​a​p​s​.​h​tml

  8. Melin­da,
    I found your arti­cle here very serendip­i­tous­ly. I am not a mem­ber of any church (although I am a Deist), and have been dress­ing ‘plain’ for most of my life, albeit with­out a par­tic­u­lar plan to do so. I arrived at this sim­ply because I did­n’t like con­tem­po­rary cloth­ing as I was grow­ing up (the very awk­ward tran­si­tion­al peri­od between the late 1960s/early 70s), and it has got­ten only very mar­gin­al­ly bet­ter since then. As a result, I’ve adopt­ed a sort of uni­form for dai­ly wear — pri­mar­i­ly sol­id col­ors, noth­ing that can’t be worn for many, many years. I also, rather unfor­tu­nate­ly for a shy and mod­est girl, had a fig­ure that attract­ed the wrong kind of atten­tion. Dress­ing plain­ly as much as pos­si­ble helped me keep my dig­ni­ty then, and now, as I approach 50 (I am 48). It’s ageless.
    This par­tic­u­lar pas­sage res­onat­ed with me: “And my heart ris­es up against the whole range of “mod­est” cloth­ing present­ly avail­able — flo­ral prairie dress­es and pinafores, sailor dress­es, den­im jumpers, and head cov­er­ings — all with nurs­ing aper­tures and mater­ni­ty inserts, and mar­ket­ed by com­pa­nies with ter­ri­fy­ing names like “Daddy’s Lit­tle Princess,” “King’s Daugh­ters,” and “Lilies of the Field.” ”
    While I don’t entire­ly know your rea­sons for dis­qui­et with this, I won­der if they are the same as mine? I very strong­ly believe in a wom­an’s iden­ti­ty that is not nec­es­sar­i­ly enmeshed with her fam­i­ly con­nec­tions or repro­duc­tive sta­tus; nor one that is sub­servient to or sub­ject to any will but her own con­science. I am wor­ried that if I express fur­ther inter­est in any sort of plain com­mu­ni­ty, I would be seen there as a third-class per­son because I have con­scious­ly cho­sen to not have chil­dren, and con­sid­er men to be my equal. Can any­one shed some light on this?
    Oth­er­wise — my dis­like of ugly, con­tem­po­rary cloth­ing has led me to a life­long, fas­ci­nat­ing hob­by — repro­duc­ing his­tor­i­cal cloth­ing. A busy life (full time, self-supporting work, doing all work and as much main­te­nance as pos­si­ble on a 98-year-old home by myself) pre­cludes dress­ing as pret­ti­ly (plain­ly) as I’d like much of the time — but plain dress and sim­ple liv­ing remain very close to my heart.
    If any­one could pro­vide me with fur­ther infor­ma­tion, I would be very grate­ful. Many thanks. TudorLdy@aol.com

  9. I too feel drawn to more sim­plic­i­ty and plain­ness in liv­ing. I great­ly admire those who can wear the more his­tor­i­cal cloth­ing, because it’s love­ly and has much that’s of val­ue today. Cape dress­es, for exam­ple, could be updat­ed for office wear. For me, though, the pure­ly his­tor­i­cal dress would be a cos­tume, not a con­vic­tion, so I find myself drawn to what the quak­er­jane web­site refers to as mod­ern plain attire. Also, I’ve reached the age where I sim­ply look bet­ter and health­i­er with almost no make­up. I work full time, am of man­age­r­i­al rank, so that will affect my choice of what to wear to send the mes­sage I’m try­ing to send. I feel that I’ve embarked on a promis­ing jour­ney by stop­ping to think about these things. Since I don’t come from a reli­gious back­ground like a Quak­er, I’m won­der­ing if this is per­haps a spir­i­tu­al lead­ing. I under­stand that a lot of women from diverse back­grounds are feel­ing sim­i­lar prompt­ings. Thank you for your website.

  10. I, too, have been a plain dress­er inter­mit­tent­ly, for 36 years. I love the prairie look, but it’s not prac­ti­cal. I end up step­ping on my skirts when I stand up after hav­ing bent down, and I almost fall over. I do all my yard work myself, which requires a lot of kneel­ing, bend­ing, push­ing a mow­er, reach­ing, heavy lift­ing, etc., as we all know, and must wear pants for this. Also, no one in my neigh­bor­hood dress­es plain­ly (sub­ur­bia), and if I were to wear dress­es exclu­sive­ly, I’d prob­a­bly get beat up. So, would that be suf­fer­ing for the name of Christ or suf­fer­ing unnec­es­sar­i­ly for being an odd­ball? No one in my church dress­es in the prairie style, either. I first was intro­duced to plain dress­ing while briefly being involved in a small Chris­t­ian cult in the ear­ly ’70s. I guess the desire to dress that way nev­er left me. I do think that many times dress­es are far more mod­est around the hip area than pants could ever be. That is, if all you are doing is sit­ting, stand­ing and walk­ing. And snug fit­ting pants on us mid­dle aged women are most unflat­ter­ing. Wear­ing a skirt can hide many fig­ure imper­fec­tions and pre­vent men from star­ing. Curi­ous­ly, hard­ly any women in our large town ever wears skirts or dress­es. It’s almost exclu­sive­ly pants, at all times of the day. How did we women make the crossover into exclud­ing skirts, dress­es and jumpers from our wardrobes? I think it must have crept into our cul­ture very slow­ly and sub­tly. Sim­ple dress­ing, wear­ing khakis, jeans and sim­ple shirts with­out jew­el­ry can end up look­ing uni­sex or gender-confused. I don’t want to do that, either! With­out a doubt, we have 2 legs, the same as men, and pants are com­fort­able and con­ve­nient. So, I too am not sure just how to dress sim­ply, mod­est­ly and fem­i­nine­ly while wear­ing pants, lit­tle make up and no jew­el­ry. If the weath­er’s not too hot, I try to wear an open long blouse over a t‑top, to pro­vide some mod­esty over the hips, but I think wear­ing dress­es exclu­sive­ly would make me an easy tar­get for harass­ment, no mat­ter what our pop cul­ture says about “tol­er­ance”!

  11. Com­mu­nion Dress is worn by peo­ple all over the world. It’s for holy occa­sions. When young kids wear the com­mu­ni­ca­tion dress they look adorable.

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