Adornment

Adornment is a mark of humanity. Seashells and lilies of the valley do not need decoration, and it is an affectation to clothe animals, who are never naked. Clothing is a gift of God to humankind.

Adornment Initially Provided by God

In the beginning husband and wife were at ease with one another and naked before God without shame (Genesis 2:21-25). After the original sin, Eve and Adam felt exposed and tried to cover themselves with makeshift aprons of fig leaves (Genesis 3:7). God’s first act of mercy was to provide the man and woman with leather coats so they would be less vulnerable in God’s good world to the cursed thorns, the heat, the cold and the violence and decrepitude that humankind now would be busy resisting (Genesis 1:26-31; Genesis 3:14-21). To this day clothing is a blessing that protects the privacy peculiar to us human creatures made in God’s image.

Adornment and Celebration

When a person is grieving or depressed, you feel like Job that being stripped down to your nakedness is somehow elementally appropriate (Job 1:21). But when it is time to be happy, married or festive, or time for a song about Christ’s victory over sin, you want to be dressed up (compare Isaiah 61:10-11; Rev. 7:9-17). The Old Testament reports extensively on the splendid finery prepared for the high priest Aaron to don after he was ritually purified (Exodus 28-29). The elaborate vestments and perfuming oils certified that Aaron’s official “naked purity” and the priests who mediated God’s forgiveness to God’s people were covered over by the holy glory of God (Exodus 39:27-31). Such attention to careful adornment is probably behind the practice of praising God on the Lord’s Day in “your Sunday best,” since all God’s people are now priests, thanks to Jesus Christ’s mediatorial sacrifice (1 Peter 2:1-10; Rev. 1:5-6).

Adornment as Temptation

Any of God’s gifts to humankind can be perverted by our vanity. The show of a leg, a hairstyle or the jewelry of women and men is evil if it supplants hope in the Lord’s mercy or distracts us from heartfelt love of the neighbor. Then adornment stinks in God’s nostrils (Psalm 147:10-11; Isaiah 3:16-26; 1 Peter 3:1-12). It is typical of false leaders, said Jesus, to wear elaborate suits (Matthew 23:1-12).

Adornment and Joy

It is significant that Christ mentions clothing in the same breath that he says our heavenly Father knows we need food and drink but advises we not chase it down the way godless people do (Matthew 6:19-34). If a person follows secular fashions in order to put himself or herself on display as a conspicuous consumer or simply dresses in a humdrum manner for all occasions, the clothes betray the man and disclose where the woman’s heart is. Both aesthetes who are dressed to kill and ascetics who reject the God-given opportunity of adornment to enhance our bodily lineaments go wrong. Humans are called upon to thank God for clothing, to use cotton, flax, wool and animal fur and skin to protect ourselves from evil, and to reflect that we are corporeally a good-looking godly man or boy or a glorious girl or woman of God—in short, that we are beautiful. Homespun, imaginative ethnic apparel can often be more normative and comely in the Lord’s eyes than reigning secularized Western couture if the dress brings an ordinary, peaceful joy of nuanced glory to one’s neighbor.

» See also: Body

» See also: Culture

» See also: Dress Code, Workplace

References and Resources

J. Craik, The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion (London: Routledge, 1994); A. Lurie, The Language of Clothes (New York: Random, 1981); M. Starkey, Fashion and Style (Crowborough, U.K.: Monarch, 1995).

—Calvin Seerveld