This is a list of tes­ti­monies, guides, books and resources on the Chris­t­ian tes­ti­mony of plain­ness, his­tor­i­cal and present. It focuses on the tra­di­tion­al­ist Quaker under­stand­ing of plain­ness but it’s not restricted to Quaker notions: you’ll find links and dis­cus­sions to the related con­cepts of mod­est dress and sim­ple dress.

If thou wilt be faith­ful in fol­low­ing that inward wit­ness that has been so long plead­ing with thee, thy sins shall all be for­given and I will be with thee and be thy pre­server.
–William Hobbs, quoted in Hamm’s Trans­for­ma­tion of Amer­i­can Quak­erism. (p.3)

Back in the sum­mer of 2002 my wife and I became inter­ested in Quaker tra­di­tions of plain dress (here’s some idea of how we look these days). Try­ing to dis­cern the issues for myself, I found very lit­tle on the inter­net, so here’s my page with what­ever tes­ti­monies, tips and links I can find. I’m start­ing to col­lect stories:

• My Exper­i­ments with Plain­ness, my own story, Eighth Month 2002
• Plain Dress–Some Reflec­tions by Melynda Huskey, Fourth Month 2004
• Avoid­ing Plain Dress Designer Cloth­ing by David/MQuadd, Sev­enth Month 21 2004
• Buy­ing My Per­son­al­ity in a Store by Amanda, Ninth Month 8 2004
• On Dress­ing Plain from Rob of “Con­sider the Lil­lies,” Sec­ond Month 15, 2005.
• Quaker blogs on Plain­ness from QuakerQuaker

Lit­er­ary Plainness

• Friends accom­plished in the min­istry were often encour­aged to write jour­nals of their lives in their later years. These jour­nals had a dis­tinct func­tion: they were to serve as edu­ca­tion and wit­ness on how to live a proper Quaker life. As such, they also had a dis­tinct lit­er­ary form, and writ­ers almost always gave an account of their con­ver­sion to plain dress. This usu­ally accom­pa­nied a pro­found con­vince­ment expe­ri­ence, wherein the writer felt led to cast aside worldly fash­ions and van­ity. Howard Brin­ton wrote about some of the lit­er­ary forms of the clas­sic Quaker Jour­nals.

Books on Plain­ness, a short bibliography

• The Quaker: A Study in Cos­tume. By Amelia Gum­mere, 1901 (out of print, gen­er­ally avail­able used for around $50). As the sub­ti­tle sug­gests, Gum­mere is crit­i­cal of the “cos­tumes” of plain dress­ing Quak­ers. She argued that Friends needed to cast aside the musty pecu­liarisms of the past to embrace the com­ing social­ist world of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tury. Although unsym­pa­theic, this is the most-frequently ref­er­enced book on Quaker plain dress. To get a sense of the turn-of-the-century Quaker embrace of moder­nity, I rec­om­mend Jerry Frost’s excel­lent talk at the 2001 FGC Gath­er­ing, “Three Twentieth-Century Rev­o­lu­tions.”
• “Why Do They Dress That Way?” By Stephen Scott, Good Books, Inter­course, PA, 1986, 1997, avail­able from Anabap­tist Book­store. A well-written and sym­pa­thetic intro­duc­tion to modern-day reli­gious groups that con­tinue to wear plain dress.
• Quaker Aes­thet­ics. Sub­ti­tled “Reflec­tions on a Quaker Ethic in Amer­i­can Design and Con­sump­tions,” this is a 2003 col­lec­tion of essays put together by Emma Jones Lap­san­sky and Anne E. Ver­planck. There’s lots of good stuff in here: see Mary Anne Caton’s “The Aes­thet­ics of Absence: Quaker Women’s Plain Dress in the Delaware Val­ley, 1790–1900″ which does an excel­lent job cor­rect­ing some of Gummere’s stereo­types. Although I’ve only had time to skim this, Caton seems to be argu­ing that Friends’ def­i­n­i­tions of plain­ness were more open to inter­pre­ta­tion that we com­monly assume and that our stereo­types of a Quaker uni­form are based in part in a way of colo­nial re-enacting that began around the turn of the century.
• Meet­ing House and Cout­ing House: Tolles’ book has some ref­er­ence to plain­ness on page 126. Have to look into this.

Posts and web­sites on Plainness

• Dis­cus­sion thread on Quaker Plain­ness on QuakerRoots
• Short His­tory of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends: Most plain dress­ing Friends today are part of the Wilburite/Conservative tra­di­tion. This online essay does an excel­lent job show­ing this branch of Friends and is a good coun­ter­point to his­to­ries that down­play the Wilbu­rite influ­ence in con­tem­po­rary Quakerism.
• A num­ber of the blogs I list in my guide to Quaker web­sites fre­quently deal with issues of plain dress. See also: Quaker Jane.
• Anabap​tists​.Org and Anabap​tist​books​.com. Through­out most of the last 350 years, Friends have been the most vis­i­ble and well-known plain dressers, but today the Amish, Men­non­ites and other Anabap­tists have most faith­fully car­ried on the tra­di­tion. Quak­ers have a lot to learn from these tra­di­tions. These sites are put together by a Con­ser­v­a­tive Men­non­ite in Ore­gon. His wife makes plain dresses, for sale through the bookstore.

Cloth­ing Sources

• My wife has been happy with The King’s Daugh­ters and I’ve heard good reports about Plain­ly­Dress and Ves­sels of Mercy.
• Men might want to write away for the paper-only Gohn Broth­ers cat­a­log (105 South Main, Mid­dle­bury, IN 46540).
• There are lots of infor­ma­tion links at Costume.org’s reli­gious cos­tumes link.

Online tuto­ri­als

• My own guide to order­ing Quaker plain men’s clothes from Gohn Broth­ers.