How do you dress for church?
ChastMastr
Shipmate
in All Saints
This is a non-judgmental thread about how we all dress for church (it sprung to mind from a thread in Hell by @The_Riv, because I wanted to comment but I think my thoughts on this don't need to be Hellish). How do you dress when going to church? Anything special? Work clothes? Jeans and a t-shirt? Shorts and a t-shirt? (I'm usually in a Hawaiian shirt (my two Hawaiian shirts are the nicest shirts I have) and shorts, myself, sometimes a t-shirt. The only long trousers I have that currently fit me (I assume they still do) are this one pair I have that I wore to class for teaching because I had to--now that I'm teaching wholly online, I don't have to worry about long trousers. I should look into a pair of blue jeans that fit, as I don't have any...
What about everyone else? (Please be kind to each other.)
What about everyone else? (Please be kind to each other.)
Comments
I'm not sure that I could remember how to knot a tie, or do up shoelaces.
I might wear a tea dress and sandals for something special, but that's pretty rare
What I where whenever I'm not required to wear anything else.
Our parish has always been on the more casual side of Anglican dress expectations for the 30 years I’ve been attending. But there’s a range of dress and nobody really looks out of place.
@Heavenlyannie I love your outfit!!! particularly the fair isle sox.
Which reminds me of one of my all-time favorite threads.
These days the church heating system is much better, so I can take my coat off, and I usually wear more or less what I'd wear for work at the bookshop - long sleeves, high necklines, and longish skirts or trousers.
When I get home I change into old clothes. Exactly the same clothes as my 'decent' ones, but these are wearing into holes they're so old. Even so I match my scarf to my top. 🙂
Since I was preaching, I wore a sports coat with slacks and a red shirt with a tie. After the service, one of the congregants joked I was wearing a Sabbath Go to Meetin outfit.
When I am not preaching, I will wear slacks and a sweater (since it is winter here). Summer will find me wearing a light-colored slacks and a short sleeve shirt.
These days, if I'm serving, I'll be wearing an alb-type thing and I'll usually follow the black shoes rule with that, as I'm very visible.
If I'm singing with Scottish Voices (where the norm is to wear whatever your own church choir wears), I wear a black shirt and trousers with a long black waistcoat, as St Pete's doesn't have choir robes.
The rest of the time: cool weather - black trousers, coloured top and possibly a lightweight jacket or waistcoat (if it's raining, I'll throw on a raincoat, which will be removed when I get there - the church tends to be rather warm). Warm weather - crop trousers, coloured linen top, sandals (which usually match or co-ordinate with the top).
As there's hardly any congregation at Evensong, I'm usually happy to wear jeans and a jumper - nobody's really looking.
Yesterday, it being Gaudete Sunday, I wore a pink top and black trousers.
On days when I'm a random parishioner in the pew, it's usually a t-shirt and either short or long pants depending on temperature. I'll often put on a suit for Christmas and Easter.
Congratulations! You have lowered the tone where even filthmeister me resisted. I'm impressed.
On a rare hot summer’s day, our priest will decide we should not robe, so I always make sure I am wearing something clean and tidy.
So much the same as any other day, though I tend to wear my newer clothes on Sundays, and trainers rather than shoes in the week.
Most of our congregation are not young, and dress slightly smartly, but not in “ posh” clothes.
Happy to oblige.
To answer the question, and assuming I'm not leading worship, my dress will be "inoffensive casual".
As am I! Actually, I just wear what I classify as 'normal' clothes. T-shirt (mostly black, generally a gig or festival one), jeans or hillwalking trousers, a sweater or rugby shirt unless it's about 25 C (I don't do cold well, then overheat rapidly). Trainers or DMs, depending on weather. In a very hot summer I have been known to show up in cut-offs and sandals.
This is essentially what I've been wearing to work since I started working from home, and what I wore when working in labs. The stuff I wore to the office I classify as 'smart', do not find very comfortable, and find it lacks enough pockets. This is not suit level, this is smart trousers, tailored t-shirt, and some sort of jacket/cardigan.
I should point out that as a classic bellringer, I ring, then leave before the service starts.
I bought a lovely purple silk dress in a charity shop for a bargainous £20, and have ended up wearing it to church sometimes because I love it and don't have anywhere else to wear it.
Funny experience related to this, which I've likely told on the Ship before:
I was taking some classes at the Anglican seminary here, and had accepted an invitation to attend Convocation. Like most things at the seminary, the level of ritual understood by everyone else was always a bit of a mystery to non-Anglican me -- an issue compounded by my own social anxiety, not by any of the lovely people at the seminary, I should add. So much of the liturgy, calendar, vestments, everything else about Anglicanism was foreign to me, so I was always watching and being careful before I said or did anything.
On the evening of convocation, since I was going alone, I spent awhile sitting in my car in the parking lot gathering up courage to go inside (that bit was about social anxiety, not Anglicanism -- I have to do it every time I go alone to an event where I won't know most people). I was watching people get out of their cars, looking for some classmates I recognized that I could hopefully attach myself to, when someone got out of their car who appeared to me to be incredibly overdressed in a very over-the-top floor-length gown. "My goodness, who is that woman with the bad perm in the garish purple dress?" I thought.
The person turned around so I could see them front-on and it was, of course, the (male) bishop. The big cross was a dead giveaway. I had a good laugh at my own ignorance.
It's always cold in our church so mostly everything's under a thick coat for much of the year. I sometimes wear the coarse green wild-silk Madagascan scarf I bought on the street over there for around £4. Otherwise I wear one of my woolly scarves.
I tend to wear my Doc Marten shoes as we stand up for most of the service. I will generally wear my decent tweed jacket or my non-leather leather-looking jacket. I rarely wear jeans to church but nobody would bat an eyelid if I did.
Technically speaking, people aren't supposed to wear T-shirts emblazoned with rock or sci-fi or brand names or any other designs to Orthodox services but I can't say I've ever seen that enforced. I do have plain black or green T shirts which I'd wear if it were ever warm enough. Which it never is.
The general rule in Orthodox circles is that you are not supposed to wear anything that draws undue attention to yourself. I have a funny story about that but we are before the watershed...
In practice, people tend to wear whatever they wear anywhere else. Nobody pays any attention to what you are wearing.
I don't wear my poshest clothes but then I rarely wear those anywhere these days other than to funerals.
When I was working, I generally had to wear a tie with a suit or blazer (we did have “casual Friday,” meaning business casual). When it came to the weekend, I found it very hard to put a tie on again, and as I sang in the (robed) choir, it really didn’t matter too much what I wore. So I typically had on a button-down shirt (Oxford cloth or chambray) with the sleeves rolled up, chinos or (in winter) corduroys, and brown leather desert boots or shoes (or maybe dirty bucks in the summer).
Now, post-Covid, the choir (for Reasons that I might start another thread about) no longer wears robes. And post-retirement, I’m not too averse to a tie once a week. So I will generally add a tie—usually a bow tie—to the above-described. If I’m the lector or am serving Communion, I’ll add a blazer.
Weddings and funerals are still a suit and tie for me.
What it does signal is that most church buildings are new enough they’ve always had HVAC systems. Most of those buildings that are older are also constructed from materials that don’t make the installation of HVAC systems too much of a problem.
I think I know which Bishop it was - would it have been in the early 2000s?
It's also quite possible that David would have been at the Convocation too, as he taught at the Theological College.
Oh, I could lower it more, if you like...
(There have been Leather Sundays at some Metropolitan Community Churches--indeed, the founder of MCC, Rev. Troy Perry, is a fellow leatherman--but I'm an Episcopalian.)
https://visitmccchurch.com/portfolio/am-i-welcome-in-mcc-if-im-a-member-of-the-bdsm-leather-community/
For those who remember "Let's Talk T&T" on the old Ship...
Yes, I think this was while you folks were here and I'm sure you can picture exactly the "woman with the bad perm in the garish purple dress."
When I am working in a school I need to pass as a proper grown-up so I dress formally - proper trousers, a shirt, occasionally a tie, a smart jacket, dark shoes etc.
One morning a week I work at what is known as an alternative provision (previously they were known as PRU's pupil referral units I believe)- a school for pupils who have been excluded from mainstream educational settings (in this case for behavioural reasons which suggest a fair degree of neurodiversity and/or trauma response). In this context the dress code is much more informal. The scheduling of this particular day allows me to go home for lunch and get changed before I go into a mainstream primary school in the afternoon. One day this term. and I forget if it was because I had to go to the afternoon school early or I was just too lazy to pick two outfits, I went to the AP dressed formally. The way these kids interacted with me totally changed for the worse, even though they know me and I've worked with them for over year. I've not made that mistake again!
For church I go pretty casual - jeans or shorts, t shirt (mrs Twangist encourages polo shirts), hoodie, trainers etc.
In our previous church when I was previously preaching or leading I would wear a smart casual shirt instead of a t shirt.
David used to say he reminded him of a generously-proportioned lady of our acquaintance with a blue-rinsed perm, which always made me giggle.
There again, I never really go anywhere
The other one is being first in the queue for the after-service coffee...