And what, pray tell, is this?
It’s a shirtwaist dress with a clergy collar attached. Is this for the office? For services? What?
Weird.
As a day dress, it’s ugly as sin and skimpy-looking. I mean, belted shirtwaist dresses can be very cute with the proper accessories and in a fun color on the right figure (not mine, kids, not mine), but black with 3/4 length sleeves?? No.
As a vestment, I’m just baffled by what this communicates. It’s sort of Donna Reed-Meets-Father Frank. All she needs is a crinoline and she could be like, “OH! I was just baking cookies at home when I realized I was late for church! Good thing I happned to be wearing my cross-dressing Priest/Mommy Clergy Dress at the time so I could run from the kitchen to the chancel!”
This reads like clergy drag to me.
We are women. We wear dresses sometimes. Shirtwaist dresses are fine (although decidedly frumpy on wide-hipped gals, I’m sorry to say); we wear those, too. When we are wearing vestments, we wear vestments. They do not attempt to resemble day dresses, for they have a different function. Finally, one does NOT wear clericals with a shirtwaist dress. It’s frumpy and awkward and not professional.
So, WomanSpirit, thanks for trying to give us another option but I’m calling this one a fail. With some adjustments it would make a nifty contemporary habit for an order of nuns.
Thanks to Caroline Divine for the link.
I’m with you. It is frumpy. I don’t wear clericals, except when I did a stint as a volunteer on-call hospital chaplain when I lived in a small town & wanted to be identified immediately as clergy.
However, it reminded me of an urgent question I had pour vous – what is your opinion of The Jumper? I see them sometimes at the Good Will, and I’m drawn to them. Perhaps nostalgic for childhood, who knows? Are they generally too school-girlish, or are there smart, grown-up versions of them anywhere? Probably also depends on what you wear with them.
Well, thanks for listening…
[Gidge, my peach, one of the MAIN reasons I started the BTFM blog was my horror of professional women in JUMPERS. They HORRIFY me. No Jumpers Ever!! See one of my favorite all-time posts here: http://beautytipsforministers.com/2009/09/23/children-at-play/ – PB]
It’s trying to do too much. In its favor though, the dress does make the wearer look like a woman.
All in all it is better than what I saw at General Assembly eleven years ago. Half the women ministers present were wearing diaphanous moumous, long, dangly earrings that jiggled as the moved and Birkenstocks that revealed their unkempt toes. Granted, General Assembly is during the summer and is close to vacation time, yet the look was horrifyingly unprofessional for an event that is the gathering of our denominational body.
Even though this dress does not make the cut, it is an improvement on that look! Horrors! We need your continuing ministry PB!
This dress just pisses me off. So close, yet so far.
Would making a nicely cut, princess seamed, a line dress with a clerical collar a CRIME? something that is SIZED TO FIT and that one could wear with a blazer or cardigan? Perhaps a sleeveless version and an elbow length sleeve version, with a bit of stretch.
And as far as jumpers go, PLEASE STEP AWAY. It is a slippery slope to ragg wool socks and birkis with the jumper. Around here jumpers are sort of code for “fundamentalist homeschooler” so I have a bit of a bias.
I had some jumpers I liked, with beautiful cloth from Guatamala. And, I had one in a beautiful eggplanty color that was very slimline, and in some kind of stretchy suede-y modal fabric. I don’t like pants, so in the winter, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, it was a warmer work-a-day option. Or, graceful for a two hour drive to the hospital and a long day in the ICU with families. Given the dress code up there, the right jumper looked positively stylin’, especially if you carried it with authority and it didn’t have a lot of little girl features. Like most things, I think it depends.
Isn’t this the same costume the nun used to wear on Father Dowling Mysteries???
I normally agree with you, but I think you’re wrong here. *ducks* I know you think it’s awful, but I think it looks nice and pastoral, while allowing some femininity. Plus, I love 3/4 sleeves.
@Cambo – LOL … Father Dowling Mysteries – *Throwback* Wow, that was a good memory …
I think this picture makes the dress look like culottes. Maybe it is meant for nuns to wear? If I saw any woman in this, I would assume she was a Catholic nun.
Hmmm I say, on the jumper issue. I know the jumpers you’re thinking about, Peebs. Big, full skirts, perhaps in a nice stonewash? Wear it with a cute turtleneck with a snowman motif? I have something a little more elegant in mind – taking a sleeveless, black crepe dress with a boatneck, adding a ribbed lavender mock turtleneck and belt, maybe a jacket atop. Black tights and heeled boots. I wish I could figure out the photo thing, cuz I am planning to get a dress shortened anyway, and am going to try it. Bon courage, eh?
I have seen clergy women so NOT rock every sort of jumper I can imagine. . . .I’d have to see the whole ensemble before signing off on it 😉
The other thing about this dress is that this model is obviously attractive and firm of figure and it makes her look sort of floppy. Those of us who are a bit floppy already just don’t need that.
Agree with madgebaby. I found this dress dreadful. (Which is why I sent the link to dear PeaceBang for her perusal and comment.) For heaven’s and earth’s sake, if you’re going to make a shirtwaist dress, make a well cut one. There really is such a thing as a tailored look that isn’t stiff. Better yet, make a dress that isn’t a shirtwaist and that flatters a women’s bodies without turning our look into Wanton Clingy Clergywomanbabe.
Also, forgive the double meow on Ash Wednesday, but the model’s hair is about to fall into her eyes.
Rev Gidget, what you described isn’t really a jumper per se (in my mind, at least) and I think this type of ensemble would look great on you. PB would be proud of how you’ve been rockin’ the fashion lately!
I laughed at your first description – snowman motif, indeed – très hideous!
Wow, you are all ministers ?
I can’t believe how petty you are.
I like this dress and can see it fitting a number of figure types.
I must disagree with Laverne. This dress would not look good on me, or most of my women clergy friends who are of a variety of figure types. And it’s frumpy and boring. Definitely not appropriate for any clergy woman under eighty! Too bad because I like Womenspirit’s other options, and own several myself.