On Dressing Plain

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.


This piece orig­i­nal­ly appeared on the “Con­sid­er the Lil­lies” blog on Sec­ond Month 15 as the post “On Dress­ing Plain”:http://consider-the-lilies.blogspot.com/2005/02/on-dressing-plain.html.
*See also:* “Quak­er plain dress resources”:http://www.nonviolence.org/Quaker/plain_dress.php, a col­lec­tion of con­tem­po­rary sto­ries and links on plain dress.

4 thoughts on “On Dressing Plain

  1. Hi Kas -
    One of the most nice­ly orga­nized overviews of Quak­er Plain dress is at Quak­er Jane’s site. She describes “dif­fer­ent lev­els of plain” — your jeans and t‑shirts would like­ly fall into the “sim­ple dress” catagory.
    Wel­come to being a Quaker! 🙂

  2. Hi Kas,
    My answer to “what’s plain dress­ing?” is “how­ev­er you’re led to dress.” I do have “more to say”:http://​www​.non​vi​o​lence​.org/​m​a​r​t​i​n​k​/​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​s​/​0​0​0​0​8​0​.​php but the first prin­ci­ple is that this isn’t a uni­form to be adopt­ed so you’ll fit in, but instead a reflec­tion of lead­ings and prompt­ings from the Holy Spir­it. See the
    “Quak­er plain dress”:http://​www​.non​vi​o​lence​.org/​q​u​a​k​e​r​/​p​l​a​i​n​_​d​r​e​s​s​.​php page on this site for a whole range of sto­ries and definitions.

  3. My idea of plain­ness would be bet­ter under­stood by using the term modest-dress. I think that peo­ple should avoid too much expense when buy­ing clothes, spend­ing friv­o­lous amounts of mon­ey on cloth­ing and being seen drip­ping in design­er labels from head to toe will cause peo­ple to ques­tion your sin­cer­i­ty and faith­ful­ness. The mes­sage: do not let mon­ey be your god.
    Your clothes should not reflect your dis­pos­able income or sta­tus. Clothes are worn for a basic pur­pose, to keep us warm and give us dig­ni­ty and a decent appear­ance. They should not be barom­e­ters of wealth or mere fash­ion state­ments. Nei­ther should they be too bright and colour­ful, or too skimpy. Cloth­ing should cov­er provoca­tive areas like cleav­age and legs.
    Avoid wear­ing too much jew­ellery, it is incred­i­bly vul­gar to wear too much and will imply a mate­ri­al­is­tic or vain tem­pera­ment. Remem­ber, the only pos­ses­sions that Christ ever had were a pair of san­dals and the clothes on his back. Stick to a sim­ple wed­ding ring (a plain gold band is best) and a pair of mod­est ear­rings or studs (not the long, dan­g­ly kind). The final item that you COULD add to this list is per­haps an ele­gant pearl neck­lace for evening wear. This should be the most jew­ellery that you should own, you should not need any more than this. Any­thing else is sim­ply vanity.
    As regards the wear­ing of cos­met­ics, the woman who wears make-up today is no longer a fall­en woman or a devi­ous temptress, but she should still exer­cise cau­tion. A light, sim­ple make-up is the way to go. Just a lit­tle foun­da­tion sealed with a light dust­ing of face pow­der, a quick swish of blush, a dab of neau­tral brown eye shad­ow on the eye­lids and the mer­est hint of brown or black mas­cara for def­i­n­i­tion, a final slick of lip­stick in a basic shade com­pletes the look. Avoid frosty or glit­tery ‘fash­ion shades’ of lip­stick. Stick with a clear red or a plum pink. Nev­er wear too much make-up, a face caked with cos­met­ics has an arti­fi­cial look and los­es char­ac­ter. It also hides the indi­vid­ual under­neath all of that make-up. For many women going com­plete­ly barefaced may be an option, if you have the con­fi­dence to do this. A face with­out cos­met­ics can look fan­tas­tic if skin is in good con­di­tion, you will also save mon­ey from not hav­ing to pay out for expen­sive make-up all the time.
    Being plain does not mean hav­ing to be a washed-out, whey-faced wall­flower. You have the option of wear­ing taste­ful­ly cho­sen and very light­ly applied cos­met­ics. If you are not very good at ‘doing your face’ how­ev­er, I think you should avoid wear­ing base and sim­ply apply a quick brush of mas­cara and a quick smudge of lip­stick. This will make you look pre­sentable with­out appear­ing immod­est or flashy. You can also scrub your face bare and show off your God-given face to the world, if you dare.
    #Just a lit­tle advice from a qui­et, Eng­lish Quak­er hop­ing to be of service.

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