195. Modesty in dress
195. MODESTY IN DRESS
Here is a virtue that almost nobody mentions any more. Isn’t it ridiculous to call modesty in dress a virtue, (1) because it’s merely external and (2) because it’s subject to culturally relative fashion? What’s considered modest in one time or place is considered immodest in another.
Whether there can be virtue and vice in connection with outward apparel?
I answer that It is not in the outward things themselves which man uses that there is vice, but on the part of man who uses them immoderately. This lack of moderation occurs in two ways. First, in comparison with the customs of those among whom one lives . . . Secondly, the lack of moderation in the use of these things may arise from the inordinate attachment of the user . . . this inordinate attachment occurs . . . when a man seeks glory from excessive attention to dress . . . Hence Gregory says . . . No one seeks costly apparel (namely such as exceeds his estate) save for vainglory. . . .
Contentedness is the habit that makes a man satisfied with what is suitable and . . . becoming in his manner of life according to the saying of the Apostle, 1 Timothy 6:8: Having food and wherewith to be covered, with these let us be content; and simplicity, which excludes excessive solicitude about such things; wherefore he says that simplicity is a habit that makes a man contented with what he has. . . .
(However,) those who are placed in a position of dignity, or the ministers of the altar, are attired in more costly apparel than others, not for the sake of their own glory but to indicate the excellence of their office or of the divine worship. . . .
There may (also) be sin on the part of deficiency, although it is not always a sin to wear coarser clothes than other people. For if this be done through ostentation or pride, in order to set oneself above others, it is a sin (II-II, 169,1).
Although St. Thomas mentions both of the two objections listed in the question, he does not mention the thing that we probably think would occur to him first when speaking of “modesty in dress”, namely obscenity and provocation to lust. This is not because he minimizes it, but—quite the opposite—because he gives it another whole question to itself (#196). Here he is thinking only of pride and ostentation.
That was much more of a vice in his time, when society was both hierarchical and formal and when one’s clothes reflected one’s position in the hierarchy. In our egalitarian and informal society, everyone wears jeans, Presidential candidates as well as garage mechanics, women as well as men. Only at Hollywood parties or awards ceremonies are they expected to show off ridiculously expensive clothes. And even then it’s only women. Men usually wear dull, standard uniforms, exactly reversing the order of nature (look at the birds). Therefore this passage will probably be of much more interest to women than to men.
Vices mentioned here are of two opposite kinds, excess and defect (as usual with vices), though one of these vices is more common than the other (as is also usual). Vices of excess or ostentation include (1) immoderateness, (2) contempt for custom, (3) inordinate affection for clothing, (4) vainglory, and (5) discontent with simplicity. Two vices of deficiency, i.e., motives for wearing clothes that are “too coarse (cheap)”, are also mentioned: (1) a lack of pride in and a disrespect for one’s office and its proper glory (rather than your own personal glory), and (2) pride in one’s humility, “showing off” one’s voluntary poverty.