Plain Dress

One of my favourite books of all times is Jane Eyre by Currer Bell*. In it, the lead character often describes herself as dressing in "Quaker-like" clothes. This was sketchily outlined as being really plain, unfashionable and only remarkable for how boring they were.

This was, until I recently decided to read a bit about them, one of my few exposures to the concept of the Quakers. They apparently had a "style" - Jane Eyre said so, because she said her clothes were in the Quaker style. And, as I have been reading, they really did have a "style", of sorts. For a while, at any rate. It was a style that wasn't unique to them, though. At least, not in the basic concept: Plain Dress.

Plain Dress is a funny concept. It's a very common expectation among a number of religions and denominations, but people eventually and inevitably get it wrong.

When Plain Dress is first adopted by a group (be they Quakers, Mennonites, Hasidic Jews or Muslims) the idea is to dress modestly. To eschew the latest fashions and instead wear clothes that are simple, practical and humble. People who dress plainly do not go in for the latest frilly collars. Indeed, their collars are not frilly at all. They do not go in for bright, attention grabbing colours. They do not go in for clothes that are made of some material that looks good, but doesn't stand up to the test of time.

And most assuredly, the original idea is to eschew clothes that scream "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!" After all the idea of Plain Dress is to dress plainly.

When groups like Quakers and the Amish first started dressing like that, they weren't dressing particularly differently from the rest of society. Their clothes were, simply, boring and practical. They also weren't the latest fashions - probably a few seasons out of step.

Somehow, though, most groups that adopt Plain Dress seem to get the wrong end of the stick. Instead of simply being "not in fashion", they stick with the same style of clothing even though it becomes wildly anachronistic. After a while, a style of clothing becomes so out-of-date that it becomes a kind of Fancy Dress, rather than Plain Dress. It becomes a badge of peculiarity, screaming "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!" even more loudly than wearing the latest fashions would.

I'm not sure what the reasoning behind that is. How exactly do so many groups go from "let's dress in a boring way so no one will notice us" to "let's dress like we have come from a hundred years in the past"? What strange force of peer pressure causes people to dress identically for hundreds of years, when the original concept was simply to avoid flashy clothes?

The Quakers worked this out a few decades ago. Rufus Jones pointed out in one of his books that it was one of the most sensible things they did: decide to be a bit less "peculiar" in their appearance and remember the point behind a lot of their habits. I wonder, though, if they still go with the concept of Plain Dress, but apply it to modern clothing.

Do they choose to wear pants that fit comfortably and wear well even though they are a bit out of fashion? Do they choose clothes that cover their entire torso? Do they choose to wear outerwear that adequately covers their underwear? Do they choose to wear clothes that are practical and make sense even though no one is selling them at major department stores and they have to go out of their way to shops that specialise in useful clothing?

Okay, maybe I just described my own clothing style. But, if that was what Plain Dress means for the 21st Century, it could be kind of cool, really. Previously, I've just worked on the assumption that my compulsive need to buy clothes that fit comfortably and wear well would doom me to looking like a dork for the rest of my life. Now I can tell myself it's an ideological principle, and feel better about it. "No, I'm not dressed like a boring dork, I'm in Plain Dress".


*Yes, everyone knows Jane Eyre was written by Charlotte Brontë. She wrote it as "Currer Bell". Look at the title page of the good, scholarly copies of the book - it still says "by Currer Bell".