The Heritage of Dress: Being Notes on the History and Evolution of ClothesWebb, Wilfred Mark
History
The Heritage of Dress: Being Notes on the History and Evolution of Clothes
Webb, Wilfred Mark
Clothing and dress; Clothing and dress -- History
Professed sisters wear a wedding ring on the third finger of their right
hand. The white outdoor stiffened hoods often stand right up from the
head in a very striking way, and sometimes no veils are worn. Some of
the caps, which are made in one piece with the collar, are fastened
under the chin by two strings, and the goffered edges of the collar
recall the bands of the Stuart period.
XXI
SUNDAY CLOTHES
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SUNDAY CLOTHES--THE WEARING OF HATS IN CHURCH BY
LADIES
Sunday clothes are a time-honoured institution, though it is a sign of
the times that many now make no difference between their weekday costume
and that which they wear on the day of rest, or if they do, they only
put on garments which are appropriate to the relaxations in which they
are accustomed to indulge. St. Jerome and St. Clement both exhorted the
early Christian worshippers to wear a special dress for worship, and the
Jews in their synagogues put on a vestment called a talith, which is
used by the whole of the congregation as well as by the officiating
minister.
We quote the following passage from St. Clement[29] because it deals
with the question of women having their heads covered while at church:
"The wife and the husband should take their way unto the church, in
seemly apparel, with unaffected gait, and speech refrained; having love
unfeigned; pure in body and pure in heart; fitly decked for prayer to
God. And this further let the woman have: let her wholly cover her head
(unless perchance she be at home), for so dressed she will have respect
and be withdrawn from gazing eyes. And if thus with modesty, and with a
veil, she covereth her own eyes, she shall neither be misled herself,
nor shall she draw others, by the exposure of her face, into the
dangerous path of sin. For this willeth the Word; seeing that it is meet
for the woman that she pray with covered head.... But then so as they,
who are joined to Christ, adorn themselves, in a more solemn fashion,
for assemblies of the church, even such should they ever be, even so be
fashioned, all the days of their life. 'To be, not seem to be,' let that
be their watchword; gentle, reverent, full of holy love, at one time not
less than at another.
"But it is not so, indeed. Somehow doth it come about, that, with change
of place, they change both their habit and their manners; even as the
polypus is said to change each one his colour to the semblance of the
rock whereby he dwells."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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