See also: “Resources on Quaker Plain­ness”

This was a post I sent to the “Pearl” email list, which con­sists of mem­bers of the 2002 FGC Gath­er­ing work­shop led by Lloyd Lee Wil­son of North Car­olina Yearly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive). Eighth Month 20, 2002

I thought I’d share some of my jour­ney in plain-ness since
Gath­er­ing. There’s two parts to plain dress: sim­plic­ity and plain-ness.

The most impor­tant part of the sim­plic­ity work has been sim­pli­fy­ing
my wardrobe. It’s incred­i­ble how many clothes I have. I sus­pect I have
a lot fewer than most Amer­i­cans but there’s still tons, and never
enough room in the clos­ets & dressers (I do have small clos­ets but
still!). I’d like to get all my clothes into one or two dresser draw­ers
and donate the rest to char­ity. Two pairs of pants, a cou­ple of shirts,
a few days worth of socks and under­gar­ments. This requires that I wash
every­thing fre­quently which means I hand-wash things but that’s okay.
The point is to not worry or think about what I’m going to wear every
morn­ing. I’ve been to a wed­ding and a funeral since I started going
plain and it was nice not hav­ing to fret about what to wear.

I also appre­ci­ate using less resources up by hav­ing fewer clothes.
It’s hard to get away from prod­ucts that don’t have some neg­a­tive side
effects (sup­port of oil indus­try, spilling of chem­i­cal wastes into
streams, killing of ani­mals for hide, exploita­tion of peo­ple
con­struct­ing the clothes at hor­ri­ble wages & con­di­tions). I try my
best to bal­ance these con­cerns but the best way is to reduce the use.

These moti­va­tions are simple-ness rather than plain-ness. But I am
try­ing to be plain too. For men it’s pretty easy. My most com­mon
cloth­ing since Gath­er­ing has been black pants, shoes and sus­penders,
and the combo seems to look pretty plain. There’s no his­toric
authen­tic­ity. The pants are Levi-Dockers which I already own, the shoes
non-leather ones from Pay­less, also already owned. The only pur­chase
was sus­penders from Sears. I bought black over­alls too. My Dock­ers were
vic­tims of a minor bike acci­dent last week (my scraped knee & elbow
are heal­ing well, thank you, and my bike is fine) and I’m replac­ing
them with thicker pants that will hold up bet­ter to repeated wash­ing
& use. There’s irony in this, cer­tainly. If I were being just
sim­ple, I’d wear out all the pants I have–despite their color–rather
than buy new ones. I’d be wear­ing some bright & wacky pants, that’s
for sure! But irony is part of any wit­ness, espe­cially in the begin­ning
when there’s some lifestyle shift­ing that needs to hap­pen. As a per­son
liv­ing in the world I’m bound to have con­tra­dic­tions: they help me to
not take myself too seri­ously and I try to accept them with grace and
good humor.

But prac­ti­cal­ity in dress more impor­tant to me than his­tor­i­cal
authen­tic­ity. I don’t want to wear a hat since I bike every day and
want to keep my head free for the hel­met; it also feels like my doing
it would go beyond the line into quaint­ness. The only type of cloth­ing
that’s new to my wardrobe is the sus­penders and really they are as
prac­ti­cal as a belt, just less com­mon today. A few Civil War
re-enactment buffs have smil­ingly observed that clip-on sus­penders
aren’t his­tor­i­cally authen­tic but that’s per­fectly okay with me. I also
wear col­lars, that’s per­fectly okay with me too.

The other thing that I’m clear about is that the com­mand­ment to
plain dress is not nec­es­sar­ily eter­nal. It is sit­u­a­tional, it is partly
a response to the world and to Quak­er­dom and it does con­sciously refer
to cer­tain sym­bols. God is what’s eter­nal, and lis­ten­ing to the call of
Christ within is the real com­mand­ment. If I were in a Quaker com­mu­nity
that demanded plain dress, I expect I would feel led to break out the
tie-die and bleach and manic-panic hair col­or­ing. Dress is an out­ward
form and like all out­ward forms and prac­tices, it can eas­ily become a
false sacra­ment. If we embrace the form but for­get the source (which I
sus­pect lots of Nine­teenth Cen­tury Friends did), then it’s time to
cause a ruckus.

Every so often Friends need to look around and take stock of the
state of the Soci­ety. At the turn of the 20th Cen­tury, they did that.
There’s a fas­ci­nat­ing anti-plain dress book from that time that argues
that it’s a musty old tra­di­tion that should be swept away in light of
the social­ist ecu­meni­cal world of the future. I sus­pect I would have
had much sym­pa­thy for the posi­tion at the time, espe­cially if I were in
a group of Friends who didn’t have the fire of the Spirit and wore
their old clothes only because their par­ents had and it was expected of
Quakers.

Today the sit­u­a­tion is changed. We have many Friends who have
blended in so well with mod­ern sub­ur­ban Amer­ica that they’re
indis­tin­guish­able in spirit or deed. They don’t want to have com­mit­tee
meet­ing on Sat­ur­days or after Meet­ing since that would take up so much
time, etc. They’re happy being Quak­ers as long as not much is expected
and as long as there’s no chal­lenge and no sac­ri­fice required. We also
have Friends who think that the peace tes­ti­mony and wit­ness is all
there is (con­fus­ing the out­ward form with the source again, in my
opin­ion). When a spir­i­tual empti­ness sets into a com­mu­nity there are
two obvi­ous ways out: 1) bring in the fads of the out­side world
(reli­gious revival­ism in the 19 Cen­tury, social­ist ecu­meni­cal­sim in the
20th, Bud­dhism and sweat lodges in the 21st). or 2) re-examine the fire
of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions and fig­ure out what babies you threw away with
the bath­wa­ter in the last rebel­lion against empty out­ward form.

I think Quak­ers really found some­thing spe­cial 350 years ago, or
redis­cov­ered it and that we are con­stantly redis­cov­er­ing it. I have
felt that power/ I know that there is still one, named Jesus Christ,
who can speak to my con­di­tion and that the Spirit comes to teach the
peo­ple directly. I’ll read old jour­nals and put on old clothes to try
to under­stand early Friends’ beliefs. The clothes aren’t impor­tant, I
don’t want to give them too much weight. But there is a tra­di­tion of
Quak­ers tak­ing on plain dress upon some sort of deep spir­i­tual
con­vince­ment (it is so much of a cliche of old Quaker jour­nals that
lit­er­ary types clas­sify it as part of the essen­tial struc­ture of the
jour­nals). I see plain dress as a reminder we give our­selves that we
are try­ing to live out­side the world­li­ness of our times and serve the
eter­nal. My wit­ness to oth­ers is sim­ply that I think Quak­erism is
some­thing to com­mit one­self wholly to (yes, I’ll meet on a Sat­ur­day)
and that there are some pre­cious gifts in tra­di­tional Quaker faith
& prac­tice that could speak to the spir­i­tual cri­sis many Friends
feel today.

In friend­ship,
Mar­tin Kel­ley
Atlantic City Area MM, NJ
martink@martinkelley.com

Related Posts

• Plain Dress­ing at the FGC Gath­er­ing (Sev­enth Month 2004)
• Gohn Broth­ers and some plain dress­ing tips (Sev­enth Month 2004)

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