Conservative Friend

Well, I suppose it had to happen. I was in Kutztown, Pennsylvania the other day (just up the road from Quakertown) and I stopped in at a plastics factory to pick up a load of insulating polystyrene. I walked into the shipping office and located a man busily typing into a computer screen. So I tapped on the door frame, and he looked up to see a plain-dressing Quaker: monochrome shirt and trousers, leather suspenders, beard, broadbrim. And he said:

"Halloween costume?"

This is the risk, as we are part of this world...... it reminds me of a shinny object tossed into a monkey cage .....boy do things get moving,

It makes me wonder why someone dressed just like everyone else claims to have their own style....... I don't see many ads on TV for suspenders.

Friends,

Where can I find out the real specifics about the Friend's 'plain dress' for men?   I know the Amish people have their own style of 'plain dress' as well and even though I highly respect them I would rather not wear a style of 'plain dress' that might be more like them than like the Friends.   

Thanks,

Tim

The various Amish churches have a suite of clothing stylesfor men that differ in many small ways, from the precise style of suspenders they wear to whether or not they close the collar of their shirts to how wide the hat brims are. The choices all look more or less "Amish," but the differences allow individual church members to show solidarity and to recognize each other.

There has never been an ordnung for Friends with respect to dress, except perhaps in much earlier times. And even when there was more conformity, it drifted with time in one direction or another. Clarkson is a good place to see what it was about 1810.

Among the very early Friends, the witness began as a testimony to simplicity and humility. Very quickly it developed the additional purpose of identifying Friends publicly to each other and to non-Friends, which is an important aspect not always recognized. An English geologist of the late 18th century wore gray work clothing, and commented once that whenever he passed by a Quaker in the fields, they would always look up, smile, and wave at him, mistaking him for a Friend.  It was also a public cross, as choosing identifiable plain clothing meant instant public ostracism, as Quakers were despised.

Fox in his Journal makes passing a passing reference to he and his companions being recognized in their travels on horseback by their gray clothing, and makes a single reference to the leather trousers he once wore. Not everybody was pleased with the uniformity. Margaret Fell thought it was a stupid idea.  

In my own case, I attempt the "gray route," because it is obviously plain, obviously non-Amish, and because I happen to like gray. I make my own suspenders out of one-inch latigo harness leather, with simple button slots at the ends, because they don't need to adjust. I either choose inexpensive shirts and cut the annoying collars off, or I arrange to make my own, and I try to buy white ones that I can dye gray. Ditto trousers-I don't wear broadfalls, which is an Amish tradition.

I wear simple black leather shoes, although I prefer simple black cowboy boots because I'm from Oklahoma and that's what I grew up with. I get the local Swartzentruber Amish to make straw summer hats, and I buy gray felt winter hats from Flying Eagle, Amish hatmakers who will do gray if you can find 11 other weirdos to order with you. I need a new one, as my last winter hat is getting to be unfit for public view.

Gray is a very difficult color to come by in shirting or in trousers. I would make all my own clothing if I had an inverter in my truck that would run a portable sewing machine. I don't have room for a treadle unit.

Within OYM, those who pursue the plain witness do so in a variety of ways. The half-beard is customary, although it historically isn't Quaker, and some plain Friends today are clean shaven. Broadfalls are common, and for semi-formal occasions many wear a dark vest. Shirts are quite inconsistent. most wear Amish-made hats.

There are several mail-order companies that offer pre-made plain styles, but they are expensive.

I have yet to see a grey bonnet for women..all seem to be black.  I may make my own, but am yet unclear if it was done.

Methinks we should refer such questions to www.quakerjane.com:)

If Ibbie doesn't know, then how much can it really matter?

I once majored in clothing design at Ohio State, and went until I was of senior standing. My academic advisor taught the cultural aspects of clothing, and the dean of the department, whose mail I sorted in work-study, was involved in placing dates on historical costume. I also had access to the costume collection. We had to do a project in one of my classes which involved writing a pretty detailed paper on an historical clothing item. Grandfather, Howard Stratton, lent me some of his grandmother's Quaker clothes. The dean of the Textiles and Clothing department looked over what seemed like every stitch of the cloth, and told me more about my great-great grandmother than even my grandfather had known. She showed me where tailoring had been done to account for a deformity in her back.

I chose her bonnet to do a paper on. We were cleaning out the house my pack-rat great uncle had lived in, and I had found the Sears&Roebuck catalogues she had probably ordered the fabric for the bonnets from. I found the fabrics in it; the fibers they were made of, and wrote about how it was made and what that meant; and what contexts it was made in. I wrote about the culture she lived in and the arguments regarding dress in Quakers at the time.

As a relative rule, current plain dressing cultures dress approximately 20-40 years behind the styles and cuts of fashion on the shelf. That would mean currently 1970's-90's dress styles for women; pants and shirt styles for men, for the basic cut. They don't purposefully choose those cuts. It is some subconscious entity, but it has been studied.

There were very personal and specific reasons that women designed and made their bonnets the way they did. Like the Amish, they discussed the nitty-gritty of the reasons, judged each other for their reasons; complimented each other for their reasons, and created trends and subtrends that date and identify subcultures within a subculture.

There were gray bonnets. Most were black, but I have seen gray bonnets of the past. Most of them were made from silk; some shiny, some raw. Among Quakers, the bonnets were made after the fashion of the time, from the patterns that were available to and used by all women. However they were greatly simplified. The old Quakers in fact, unlike the Amish, dressed equal to the fashion of their time, minus the lace and frills. You can take a Quaker bonnet and find a high society bonnet cut from the exact same pattern. They have the same skeleton. It is a very different trend than the dress of the Amish and Mennonites. The Quakers were current, and payed close attention to fashion, in fact. Their witness of plainness and simplicity had a very different focus from the Anabaptist witness of separatism.

I don't wear bonnets, but I think we are pretty close to a time when they will come back in style. Women are dying of melanoma in greater numbers than ever before, and broad brimmed hats are coming back into style in some circles. I think that if you add a bonnet to your plain dress, you might think of the direct reasons for it first; then the functionality; and then maybe put some thoughts into the materials, how they were made and who made them. Looking at what someone else does is fine - they may have some good points and tips, but dress, even plain dress, is a very personal matter. Even back then when it was common among Friends, even among Quakers, it was original to each person. It is entirely possible that a fashionably designed bonnet, albeit very simple, might inspire a trend again among the general population. That wouldn't be a bad thing.

Historical dress scholarship is fraught with complexities and variant opinions. Even the most general and inclusive of statements have exceptions, some of them quite notable. Historically, rural Friends tended to be 'more plain' in dress than urban Friends.  Much plain dress is considerably more than "twenty to forty years" earlier than the contemporary modes. And some forms have never been current, save for those small groups who have created or adopted them as part of their own dress. There are 19th Century photographs of Friends dressed entirely in grey garb, or a grey/white or grey/black mixture. Grey and white along with brown and white were frequently used by Puritans, a century before the Friends. Anabaptists and Pietists have some basic core styles as both are German Separatists, whereas the Friends are English Separatists and have historical similarities with the Shakers, Ranters, and others. It is a heartening sign that there is a rekindled interest in plain dress, whatever mode and variant it takes.