What happened to wearing beautiful clothes?

I’ve been reflecting recently on the state of fashion in todays world and the utter lack of beauty and sometimes shocking lack of dressing up/dressing for the occasion. As a sewist I consider the clothes I make an art form, but as someone who also loves style that same mentality applies to what I wear.

I recently shared a post on Instagram (here) that puts into words my convictions about dressing up and clothing ourselves in beauty as children of God! Obviously we can all agree that clothing can be beautiful (and yet it can also lack beauty) and that dressing up changes how we see ourself and what we communicate to the world. I have always believed that Fashion (and more specifically Personal Style) had the ability to be a LANGUAGE and give us words to say without having to speak.

However, as I have delved more into theology over the years, and even more specifically as of late delved into liturgical style (since becoming Catholic) I have been struck with the realization that clothing is a way for us to witness to the world!

And with that realization, I began to think…As humans if we are MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD, then why would we reflect a less than beautiful image to the world?

In Genesis 1:27 it tells us “So God created mankind in how own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

Being made in the “Image of God” (imago dei) means that as humans we are uniquely designed to REFLECT God’s character, his heart, possess inherent dignity, and act as stewards of creation. And we know that God is a CREATIVE God, as seen in creation al around us! God created the world with BEAUTY and it is important that we steward and reflect that beauty which points back to our Creator!

We can steward and reflect that beauty in what we wear! Dressing in ways that are beautiful, flattering, and pleasing isn’t about vanity (although only God know our true heart position)…but rather dressing with beauty is about acknowledging the BEAUTY of Gods image and the power we have to communicate what we believe about God (and therefore ourselves as His creation) to the world!

In a fallen and broken world we often take on a mentality that our bodies are BAD! As Christian women I think this has somehow became a message that we internalize because we don’t talk about the goodness of the body enough in churches. The feeling that our bodies are “bad” can be so easy to come by, especially if we read Genesis 3:7-10 out of context:

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

However, this verse doesn’t tell us our bodies our shameful, because just a chapter before in Genesis 2:25 we read "And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed." Our bodies are not shameful (our sin is and that is why we need Jesus). Our bodies could never be shameful because we are made in Gods image.

What is so beautiful about the Christian faith is that it hinges on the incarnation, the “word made flesh”. Ours is an enfleshed religion, and we must be very careful not to un-flesh it (After all Jesus came to earth in the flesh as a man).

However, in our broken world where the image of the body as GOOD has been so tainted and we have received false messages, we often take on a mentality of “mind-body dualism” separating our SOUL (good) from our BODY (bad)…but this is a LIE we often internalize from the Devil who wants us to believe our bodies are bad (this view of the body is also found in the ancient religion of Manichaeus).

When we start believing that our bodies are BAD we have to go back to Genesis 1:31 which tells us that everything God created was VERY GOOD (both the earth and humans). So how do we start to view our bodies as GOOD & treat them accordingly in how we dress? We have to remember how we were made!

We have to back to “Imago Dei” (being made in the image of God). John Paul II in his Theology of the Body perfectly captured how we should view how we were made and for what purpose:

The body, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden since time, imemorial in God [God’s love for man], and thus to be a sign of it.

- Theology of the body, Februrary 20, 1980

Our bodies were always meant to reflect the divine! So we should NOT clothe ourselves and our bodies out of SHAME…but we SHOULD clothe our bodies out of an understanding for how God designed us. We should clothe our bodies knowing they were made GOOD. We should clothe ourselves with the understanding that how we dress tells the world what we believe about ourselves & what we believe about God.

So how exactly do we make the Image of God VISIBLE to the world? How do we live out and embrace being made in Gods image? Maybe you have already guessed!!

We CLOTHE OURSELVES IN BEAUTY!

After all, we are a creation of the divine artist and creator God…why would we view ourselves any less than a masterpiece with a calling? And why would we clothe ourselves with anything less than clothing that that reflects the beauty of God and therefore the beauty of being a physical being with a soul?!

The clothes we wear are not just a language that communicate what we believe about the world…but they are also an ART FORM that is deeply theological (if we so choose)!

Every piece of clothing we put on is a paint stroke on a canvas.

Every accessory we choose is a highlight to the painting.

Our clothing gives us the ability to CREATE BEAUTY and therefore to REVEAL DIVINE BEAUTY (the image of God). And I think we can all agree that our world is in desperate need of being reminded what TRUE BEAUTY is!

We have been given a calling by God to be LIGHTS in the world (Matthew 5:14-16). And what better way to be a light than to CLOTHE OURSELVES IN BEAUTY & REVEAL THE IMAGE OF GOD!!

I have seen far to often over the years Christian women sacrificing beauty for the sake of “modesty” and taking on the mindset that their body is bad and must be “covered up”…but as I have explained above, this is not altogether what the Bible teaches nor how God made us to reflect his image (by dampening our light).

Being a woman (especially a Christian woman) doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice beauty, be unattractive, look frumpy, or be covered head to toe! Because the truth is that being a Christian woman means reflecting the image of God in how we dress & clothe ourselves.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Checkout my Instagram post (HERE) about this and leave a comment letting me know what you think!

If you found this topic interesting, might I suggest a few book titles on the topic you might enjoy for further reading!