The perpetual tension: Piety, pomp, and the problem of religious dress

“ But the idea which I am most anxious to impress upon the minds of young women, is the symbolic use of Dress, is the fact that they have minds to dress as well as bodies. Our outward Dress should be symbolic of an inward Dress. While we toil to robe in beauty these perishing bodies, we should labor more industriously to adorn those immortal qualities which shall wear their adornments when a new heaven and a new earth shall succeed to those that now are. This is the point at which young women err more than elsewhere. They labor to dress the body, and sadly neglect the soul. ”

“ It is a world to see the costliness and the curiosity, the excess and the vanity, the pomp and the bravery, the change and the variety, and finally the fickleness and the folly that is in all degrees; insomuch that nothing is more constant in England than inconstancy of attire. So much cost upon the body, so little upon souls; how many suits of apparel hath the one, or how little furniture hath the other! ”

“ He has put on robes of beauty and glory upon all his works. Every flower is dressed in richness; every field blushes beneath a mantle of beauty; every star is vailed in brightness; every bird is clothed in the habiliments of the most exquisite taste. The cattle upon the thousand hills are dressed by the Hand Divine. Who, studying God in his works, can doubt that he will smile upon the evidence of correct taste manifested by his children in clothing the forms he has made them? Who can doubt that Dress is a matter properly coming within purview of religion? Religion is what we learn of God. ”

“ Women are in general at as much pains and cost in their dress, as if by it they were to be recommended both to God and man. It is, however, in every case, the argument either of a shallow mind, or of a vain and corrupted heart. ”

“ Religion and Dress—Variety in Nature—Dress should not be Injurious—Present Customs Unhealthy, Slovenly, and Immodest—A Subject of Religious Consideration—Suicide vs. Providence—Foolish Vanity—Taste an Element of Mind—Dress should be Symbolical—Woman should Elevate her Aims—Appropriate Dress Admirable.
Comfort, taste, and religion agree that Dress is one of the proprieties of civilized and Christian life. If religion reaches a part, it does the whole of life. ”

“ We make no indiscriminate onslaught upon customs of dress. Why did God put spots on the pansy, or etch the fern leaf? And what are china-asters good for if style and color are of no importance?
The realm is as wide as the world, and as far-reaching as all the generations, over which fashion hath extended her sceptre. For thousands of years she hath sat queen over all the earth, and the revolutions that rock down all other thrones have not in the slighest affected her domination. ”

“ But it is not alone the worldly-minded who make no pretence to any higher law than their own selfish gratification, who bow the knee to fashion. Christian mothers, are you guiltless? Think of the time, the health and strength given to dress; the bondage which compels you to pervert all real taste, to do violence to your own natural instincts of neatness and true elegance, and accept the absurdities of fashion, simply because the ruling style requires it. ”

“ Fashionable dressing has become such a habit, such a necessity with us, that, as the Sovereign Pontiff remarked with sorrow, our holy temples often present the sad spectacle of women who call themselves Christians, and believe themselves such, coming to these holy places rather to rival one another in extravagance of attire than to excite to piety. Alas! what influence will our supplications have, if humility, that essential condition of prayer, be wanting. Ah! let us rather remain at home than go to the foot of the altar with the guilty desire of being admired. ”

“ Remember that on the day of your baptism you renounced the pomps and vanities of the world, and, if you are allowed to conform to customs not contrary to the maxims of the Gospel, you ought at the same time manifest in your dress, as in the rest, the glorious character that God has stamped in your soul. You should show by your conduct the striking contrast that exists between the Christian woman and the woman who, being incredulous or indifferent, does not draw her rule of life from the precepts of the Gospel. ”

“ How can there be wisdom where Fashion dictates the mode of thought and the form of utterance? How can there be greatness where Fashion shapes the growth and prescribes its bounds? There is nothing in our country so paralyzing to the growth of mind and the progress of righteous principles as the easy and general conquest of Fashion over our people. If it were only in matters of dress and equipage, of outward adornment, that it bore sway, it would not be so ruinous. But it goes into every department of thought and life, into opinions, principles, religion. ”

“ God demands of his people that they dress modestly as becomes people who profess holiness. The putting on of apparel for adornment and the wearing of jewelry are not consistent with Christian modesty. The nude and lewd art of dressing which is becoming so prevalent among professors of Christ is an abomination in the sight of God, and a practise which no virtuous man or woman can countenance. ”

“ It is the grand refiner of life. Whatsoever cultivates the taste, develops properly its activities, and refines and elevates its pleasures, does a good office for man. And this is just the proper office of Dress. It is true that Dress has a mission, a good one, a moral one, ay, a religious one. It is a refiner, a cultivator, a subduer of coarseness, barbarity, rudeness. Pity the soul that has no taste for Dress. ”

“ Thus it goes in France; and in England, virtuous and domestic princesses and peeresses must take obediently what has been decreed by their rulers in the demi-monde of France; and we in America have leaders of fashion, who make it their pride and glory to turn New York into Paris, and to keep even step with everything that is going on 382 there. So the whole world of womankind is marching under the command of those leaders. The love of dress and glitter and fashion is getting to be a morbid, unhealthy epidemic, which really eats away the nobleness and purity of women. ”

“ When the great, ruling country in the world of taste and fashion has fallen into such a state that the virtual leaders of fashion are women of this character, it is not to be supposed that the fashions emanating from them will be of a kind well adapted to express the ideas, the thoughts, the state of society, of a great Christian democracy such as ours ought to be.
"What is called, for example, the Pompadour style of dress, so much in vogue of late, we can see to be perfectly adapted to the kind of existence led by dissipated women, whose life is one revel of excitement ”

“ They give forty thoughts to dressing their bodies to one for their minds; they spend forty dollars for bonnets, shoes, and clothes to one for books, instruction, and improvement; they give forty hours to toilet to one to solid study and serious reflection; they put forty adornments upon their persons to one upon their minds. How sad the thought! Compare a well-dressed body with a well-dressed mind. Compare a taste for dress with a taste for knowledge, culture, virtue, and piety. Dress up an ignorant young woman in the "height of fashion;" put on plumes and flowers, diamonds and gewgaws ”

“ You love dress too much when you care more for your outward adornings than for your inward dispositions,—when it afflicts you more to have torn your dress than to have lost your temper,—when you are more troubled by an ill-fitting gown [Pg 233] than by a neglected duty,—when you are less concerned at having made an unjust comment, or spread a scandalous report, than at having worn a passée bonnet,—when you are less troubled at the thought of being found at the last great feast without the wedding garment, than at being found at the party to-night in the fashion of last year. ”

“ To-day, fashion passes from one extreme to another, so that what was worn last year is not permitted this year. And now do you understand this apparently strange custom? A robe is graceful in style and trimming; it is very becoming to you; the color harmonizes well with your complexion and your hair; your mirror has told you so. The fashion changes; your face, your style of beauty, if beauty you possess, remain the same; yet you do not hesitate to discard your becoming attire for something so ridiculous, so extravagant, so frightful perhaps, as to make you appear ungraceful or even ugly ”

“ There are women whose minds are so taken up with the latest fashion, and the newest dress, that they have neglected the white garment of holiness, and forgotten the old, old fashion—death. My brothers, my sisters, take heed. It is not so much the coarse vices of the brutal and ignorant which ruin souls, as the selfish worldliness of those who ought to know better. If you are living for self, for work, for pleasure, for society, for anything but God, then, in spite of your respectable name, and your outward forms of religion, you have slipped from the narrow way which leads to life eternal. ”

“ For, as Polonius says in his excellent lecture, a lecture to which I am glad to have the opportunity of expressing my obligations, one of the first qualities of apparel is its expressiveness. And the affected style of dress in the last century was the natural characteristic of a society of affected manners and affected conversation--a characteristic which the realistic dramatist will highly value down to the smallest detail of accuracy, and the materials for which he can get only from archaeology. ”

“ And yet, as of some men and women, the very dress, by its simplicity, elegance, and unity, seems fitted rather to garb the soul than the body—seems the soul made visible—so is it with the style and manner of many great poets. Their speech and music without are as inevitable as their genius, or as the song forever sounding within their souls. And why? The whole ever tends to beget a whole—the large substance to cast its deep, yet delicate shadow—the divine to be like itself in the human, on which its seal is set. So it is with Wordsworth. ”

“ The only motive in toilet which seems to have obtained much as yet among young girls is the very vague impulse to look ‘stylish,’—a desire which must answer for more vulgar dressing than one would wish to see. If girls would rise above this, and desire to express by their dress the attributes of true ladyhood, nicety of eye, fastidious neatness, purity of taste, truthfulness, and sincerity of nature, they might form, each one for herself, a style having its own individual beauty, incapable of ever becoming common and vulgar. ”

“ The folly of woman's dress lies not in her instinct to make herself beautiful, it lies in her ignorance of the principles of beauty, of the intimate and essential connection between utility and beauty. It lies in the pitiful assumption that she can achieve her end by imitation, that she can be the thing she envies if she look like that thing. ”

“ I can reply to you in the words of Susannah Temple, when I made the same interrogatory. 'You think the peculiarity of our dress is an outward form which is not required. It was put on to separate us from others, and as a proof that we had discarded vanity. I am aware that it is not a proof of our sincerity; but still, the discarding of the dress is a proof of insincerity. We consider, that to admire the person is vain, and our creed is humility. It is therefore an outward and visible sign, that we would act up to those tenets which we profess. ”

“ The most religious men and women invariably abstain from ornamental dress in every way, deeming it frivolous vanity, and inconsistent with that they profess—'to be seeking God, and forsaking worldly things'. ”

“ God requires us to adorn our bodies in modest apparel. Now, to meet the conditions, some things are necessary: First—The color and quality of goods purchased. Secondly—The style or manner in which they are made. It is not for the glory of God to have your clothes cut and made so that all who see you would never mistrust your clothes were made for you, but for some person of a much larger make-up. There are some people who are real saints, but in their manner of dress, they have no respect for the “terms” modest or adorn. ”

“ But how disedifying is the conduct of the religious who attends too much to the neatness of her person and to the fineness or richness of her apparel, who wears superfluous ornaments, whose dress is made in a manner apt to attract notice, and whose whole appearance exhibits worldly vanity! ”

“ But if for your part you desire to be a monk and not merely to seem one, be more careful of your soul than of your property; for in adopting a religious profession you have renounced this once for all. Let your garments be squalid to shew that your mind is white; and your tunic coarse to prove that you despise the world. But give not way to pride lest your dress and language be found at variance. Baths stimulate the senses and must, therefore, be avoided; for to quench natural heat is the aim of chilling fasts. ”

“ There is no agreement between the divine and the human sacrament, [2] the standard of Christ and the standard of the devil, the camp of light and the camp of darkness. One soul cannot be due to two masters—God and Cæsar. And yet Moses carried a rod, [3] and Aaron wore a buckle, [4] and John (Baptist) is girt with leather [5] and Joshua the son of Nun leads a line of march; and the People warred: if it pleases you to sport with the subject. But how will a Christian man war, nay, how will he serve even in peace, without a sword, which the Lord has taken away? [6] ”

“ For any man or woman to come out from this style of things, and endorse plainness in dress, and righteousness all the way through by precept and example, requires a holy heart, filled with love divine. And this manner of life pays bountifully in this present world, and will in the world to come, even life everlasting. During the past fifty years I have noticed those that the Lord blessed the most, and were the most useful in the church and world around them, were that class that conscientiously carried out in their lives the Apostolic plan already referred to. ”

“ For where the devil cannot create vainglory in a man by means of his well-fitting and neat dress, he tries to introduce it by means of a dirty, cheap, and uncared-for style. If he cannot drag a man down by honour, he overthrows him by humility. If he cannot make him puffed up by the grace of knowledge and eloquence, he pulls him down by the weight of silence. If a man fasts openly, he is attacked by the pride of vanity. ”

“ I am aware that one should not wish them to assume an entirely-antique costume of dress, which would be extravagant, and sometimes indecent: but they might, without the affectation of singularity, model their taste on that simplicity of attire, which is so noble, so delightful, and in all respects conformable to the manners of christians. Make them observe often, and by times, the vanity and, frivolousness of that mind which is sacrificed to the inconstancy of fashion.12 True [197] grace follows, but never does violence to, nature. ”

“ The woman who betrays an absolute negligence in her toilette, who would willingly appear in a torn dress or a faded bonnet, when her position in society requires something better, is almost as much to blame as those who spend their whole time in dressing and undressing.
That which we ought to possess, that which should regulate our dress, as well as all our actions, is a clear comprehension of our duties. We should appeal to our conscience, scrutinize our intentions and our desires, and then regulate and reform wherever there is need. ”

“ A celebrated English divine once said to a lady: “Madam, so dress and so conduct yourself, that persons who have been in your company shall not recollect what you had on.” To be well dressed does not necessarily mean that your apparel should be a copy of the latest whim of fashion, or made of the costliest material. That person is well dressed whose attire shows a suitableness to circumstances of time and place, and the position and means of the wearer. ”

“ The fitness of dress depends upon the occasion.
The beauty of dress depends upon line and color.
The ethics of dress depends upon quality and the relation of cost to one's means.
In time we may get into the heads of all women, rich and poor, that an open-work stocking and low shoe for winter street wear are as unfit as they all concede a trailing skirt to be. In time we may even hope to train the eye until it recognizes the difference between a beautiful and a grotesque form, between a flowing and a jagged line. ”

“ What I am aiming at is to have my little daughter look upon dress as a secondary matter, and feel far more anxious to be one who is pleasing in the sight of her heavenly Father than one admired and envied by some earthly creature as the possessor of wealth, and fine or costly raiment. In short, I want you to feel that the style and richness of your attire is a matter of little consequence, while to live in the light of God's countenance, pleasing and honoring him and growing in holiness and conformity to his will, is to be desired and striven for beyond everything else. ”

“ I almost censure her for her neatness, for the attention she bestows on her dress; for a certain indefinable coquetry there is in the very modesty and simplicity of her attire. But what! must virtue be slovenly? Must holiness be unclean? Can not a pure and clean soul rejoice in the cleanliness and purity of the body also? Is there not something reprehensible in the displeasure with which I regard the neatness and purity of Pepita? Is this displeasure, perchance, because she is to be my step-mother? But, perhaps, she does not wish to be my step-mother! Perhaps she does not love my father! ”

“ Women will not be doing their duty, as citizens in this country, until they recognize fully the obligations laid upon them by their control of consumption.
The very heart of the question of the dress is, then, economic and social. It is one of those great everyday matters on which the moral and physical well-being of society rests. One of those matters, which, rightly understood, fill the everyday life with big meanings, show it related to every great movement for the betterment of man. ”

“ Extravagance in dress, and the point it has at present attained, is simply ridiculous folly, and at the same time, what is more to be lamented, it is in direct opposition to the spirit of Christianity. ”