Simplicity in Dress
585
There is no style of dress more appropriate to be worn at the
sanitarium than the reform dress. The idea entertained by some, that
it would detract from the dignity or usefulness of that institution, is a
mistake. It is just such a dress as one would expect to find there, and
should not have been discarded. In this suit the helpers could perform
their work with far less effort than is now required. Such a dress
would preach its own sermon to the devotees of fashion. The contrast
between their own unhealthful, beruffled, trailing garments and the
reform dress, properly represented, suggestive as it is of convenience
and ease in using the limbs, would have been most instructive. Many of
the patients would have made greater improvement had they accepted
the dress reform.
We regret that any influence should have been brought to bear
against this neat, modest, healthful dress. The natural heart is ever
pleading in favor of worldly customs, and any influence tells with
tenfold power when exerted in the wrong direction.
[639]
While none were compelled to adopt the reform dress, our people
could and should have appreciated its advantages and accepted it as
a blessing. The evil results of an opposite course may now be seen.
At the sanitarium, physicians and helpers have greatly departed from
the Lord’s instructions in regard to dress. Simplicity is now rare.
Instead of neat, unadorned apparel, which the pen of Inspiration has
prescribed, almost every style of fashionable dress may be seen. Here,
as elsewhere, the very ones who complained of the labor required to
prepare the reform dress have now gone to great extremes in needless
adornment. All this involves so much time and labor that many are
obliged to hire their work done at twice what it would have cost had
the garments been made in simplicity as becomes women professing
godliness. The making of these fashionable dresses frequently costs
more than the dress itself. And double the value of the material is often
expended for the trimmings. Here pride and vanity are displayed, and a
great lack of true principle is seen. If they would be content with plain,
simple clothing, many who are dependent on their weekly earnings
could do the most of their own sewing. But this is now impossible,
and the dressmaker’s bill takes from their small wages a considerable
sum.
God designed the reform dress as a barrier to prevent the hearts
of our sisters from becoming alienated from Him by following the