Quakers and the Vanities of Fashion
At a conference of the Hicksite Quakers held at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, recently, thousands of Quakers from different parts of the United States and Canada were in attendance. But, says a newspaper report, “No one would have identified them from others by their dress. The women wore their hair in the latest fashions, their dresses were in present-day style; flowers and feathers adorned their hats, and they wore jewelry.” Thus a people whom God has greatly used in their original simplicity and characteristic humility are now indulging in the vanities of fashion. And they have chosen these things in preference to living by one of the principles this body has been called to witness for: “Whose adorning let it not be the outward adorning of braiding the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit.”