Corsets are an evil which have been found to have not even one redeeming value. It was an evil which harmed not only the woman who laced, but her children as well. Tight lacing was the cause of the vapors — fainting spells women frequently had. The fashionable combination of long skirts and corsets prevented women from exercising and they were shut up indoors. It is no wonder that women died young, that infant mortality was high, that tuberculosis of the lungs was epidemic. Women were bowing to the idol of fashion and sacrificing their lives on her altar.

In the midst of this fashion worship, a few voices were heard calling for change. In Seneca Falls, New York, Elizabeth Cady Stanton began a dress reform movement after her cousin visited her home wearing harem-like pants topped by a skirt which reached a little below the knee. This dress was to become known as the Bloomer Costume and was made high sport of. Those who adopted and wore this costume were mainly those who were pushing for women's rights; some spiritualists also adopted the costume. Subjected as it was to derision and jokes, it lasted only a few years but paved the way for the acceptance of modern pantsuits on women. Ellen White did not sanction nor approve of this dress; indeed she warned Seventh-day Adventist's not to adopt it. "Those who feel called out to join the movement in favor of women's rights and the so-called dress reform might as well sever all connection with the third angel's message. The spirit which attends the one cannot be in harmony with the other. The Scriptures are plain upon the relations and rights of men and women. Spiritualists have, to quite an extent, adopted this singular mode of dress. Seventh-day Adventists, who believe in the restoration of the gifts, are often branded as spiritualists. Let them adopt this costume, and their influence is dead. The people would place them on a level with spiritualists and would refuse to listen to them." (1T 457:3). [see figure 5: "Amelia Bloomer in the Bloomer costume" and figure 7: The Bloomer costume from Currier and Ives"]

A reformation in women's dress was needed, but the Bloomer Costume was not the answer. In the vision at Otsego, Michigan, on June 6, 1863, now called the Health Reform Vision, Mrs. White was given the message for our people on dress reform. In keeping with her calling as God's messenger, she faithfully delivered the message calling for a dress reform. In condemning the fashions current in the 1860's, God did not leave His children without something better and healthier to replace it. In the Spirit of Prophecy it is referred to as the reform dress. It was, in a number of ways, radically different from the current fashions then in vogue. It consisted of a pair of full-cut pants, gathered and buttoned to a waist, the legs tapered in to the instep or gathered in a band about the ankle. Over this was the dress with a full-cut skirt and bodice with long sleeves and round neckline. The skirt was shorter than then fashionable, being eight to ten inches from the floor. The bodice was full-cut, allowing a woman a full, deep breath without any binding about the chest. Over this was worn a sacque or Jacket. The shoes were actually boots which came to about the top of the ankle. The entire dress was constructed in such a way that the weight was all suspended from the shoulders. It was cut loosely, allowing perfect freedom of movement, enabling a woman to take advantage of outdoor exercise in any weather. The cut and style of the dress prevented extension by wearing hoops or skirts (petticoats) which would make it look ridiculous. "This dress does not require hoops, and I hope that it will never be disgraced by them. Our sisters need not wear many skirts to distend the dress. It appears much more becoming falling about the form naturally over one or two light skirts." (1T 523:1). [see figure 6: "The Reform Dress, as pictured in the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald 4/14/1868"]

It was to be made of durable fabric in modest colors, uniformly used. "Be particular to have the pants and dress of the same color and material, or you will appear fantastic." (1T 522:2). "When figured colors are used, those that are large and fiery, showing vanity and shallow pride in those who choose them, should be avoided. And a fantastic taste in putting on different colors, is bad, such as white sleeves and pants with a dark dress." (RH 4/14/68).

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Our dresses are fitted to sit easily, obstructing neither the circulation of the blood, nor the natural, free, and full respiration. Our skirts being neither numerous nor fashionably long, do not impede the means of locomotion,but leave us to move about with ease and activity. All these things are necessary to health. (RH 4/14/68).

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God did not provide an exact pattern for the reform dress; rather, the sisters, working together with the information provided in the visions, designed the pattern to resemble, as nearly as possible, the dress Sister White had seen. In Battle Creek, a number of women made and wore the dress. The reform dress represented God's ideal, a costume for women that was simple, modest, healthful, and Christlike. It was not extravagant or showy, it wasn't ornamented nor fashionable. it did not foster pride in the wearer, nor flattering admiration in the beholder for it was designed to draw both to Jesus. At the same time it was becoming to the wearer.

In this dress, the legs and ankles were covered and protected from the cold and chill of exposure. The fashions of that time covered a woman's legs with only a pair of stockings and muslin drawers. The multitude of skirts worn were heavy and their length, plus tight lacing, kept most women confined indoors, unable to freely exercise or even to do her household duties properly. Should she go outside, her restricted ability to draw in a decent breath further prevented much motion or she might faint. Sleeves and bodices were also made tight, impeding movement even more. By adopting the reform dress, these restrictions of movement were removed; women could exercise and carry out their housework unhampered by fashionable dress, greatly improving her health. She could sit down anywhere and her skirts did not fill an entire sofa, she could climb stairs with ease, no more wet skirts slapped about her ankles when she went outdoors, and her internal organs were able to function normally.

In September of 1865, Sister White put on the reform dress. With the exception of "meetings, in the crowded streets of villages and cities, and when visiting distant relatives," she wore it everywhere. (RH 10/8/67). Eventually she wore it continuously until it was removed.

Wearing the reform dress involved sacrifice; a willingness to bear a cross which for many was too difficult to bear. It was not made a testing truth and Sister White did not make it one of the principle subjects of her talks as she traveled. "I do not consider the dress question of so vital importance as the Sabbath. Concerning the latter there can be no hesitation." (1T 522:1). Because of the prejudice against the dress, many women found it difficult to put it on. Many who did, did not use the pattern, but worked up something on their own. "In some places there is great opposition to the short dress. But when I see some dresses worn by the sisters, I do not wonder that people are disgusted and condemn the dress. Where the dress is represented as it should be, all candid persons are constrained to admit that it is modest and convenient. In some of our churches I have seen all kinds of reform dresses, and yet not one answering the description presented before me. Some appear with white muslin pants, white sleeves, dark delaine dress, and a sleeveless sacque of the same description as the dress. Some have a calico dress with pants cut after their own fashioning,not after 'the pattern,' without starch or stiffening to give them form, and clinging close to the limbs. There is certainly nothing in these dresses manifesting taste and order. Such a dress would not recommend itself to the good judgement of sensible-minded persons. In every sense of the word it is a deformed dress." (1T 521-2).

Sister White issued this plea:

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Before putting on the reform dress, our sisters should obtain patterns of the pants and sack worn with it. It is a great injury to the dress reform to have persons introduce into a community a style which in every particular needs reforming before it can rightly represent the reform dress. Wait, sisters, till you can put the dress on right." (1T 522).

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Many never put on the dress at all, others removed it rather quickly. They could not endure the sneers, the mockery, and the accusations of being a spiritualist. They couldn't bear to appear different from the rest of the world. To be censured and shunned for wearing so unfashionable a dress was more than their spirits could tolerate. In conforming to the fashions of the world, they were adopting the spirit of the world. Fashion fosters pride and a love of display in the human heart.

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Many, in order to keep pace with absurd fashion, lose their taste for natural simplicity, and are charmed with the artificial. They sacrifice time and money, the vigor of intellect, and true elevation of soul, and devote their entire being to the claims of fashionable life. The more they indulge their pride and ambition in this direction, the more they are cultivating qualities of mind of a low order, which should be continually restrained and depressed, instead of strengthened by exercise. Pride and fashion, if not restrained, will finally become the overruling passion, controlling the entire being, bringing into abject slavery all the noble qualities of the mind. (HR 4/72).

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We must understand that the dress reform was but a small part of health reform, but dress reform is far broader than health. Dress involves body, mind, and spirit. By our dress others judge our relationship to Christ. Dress reform was given to combat both the spirit of the world and the ill health of the fashions of the nineteenth century. Many girls, slaving away in factories, were such devotees of Dame Fashion, they would spend nearly their entire pay on dress. Poor women who could not afford to be fashionable, were driven to despair when surrounded in the church by their more fashionably dressed sisters on Sabbath morning. "Many will not attend the service of God upon the Sabbath because their dress would appear so unlike that of their Christian sisters in style and adornment. Will my sisters consider these things as they are, and will they fully realize the weight of their influence upon others? (4T 631:2).

The goddess of fashion is a despot. In the nature of all true tyrants she demands total devotion of body, mind, and soul.

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Fashion rules the world; and she is a tyrannical mistress, often compelling her devotees to submit to the greatest inconvenience and discomfort. Fashion taxes without reason and collects without mercy. She has a fascinating power, and stands ready to criticize and ridicule the poor if they do not follow in her wake at any cost, even the sacrifice of life itself. Satan triumphs that his devices succeed so well, and Death laughs at the health-destroying folly and blind zeal of the worshipers at Fashion's shrine. (4T 434:2).

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The majority of the church must have been her devotees for in 1881 Sister White wrote;

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It was the Lord's purpose to prove His professed people and reveal the motive of their hearts. At campmeetings I seldom had anything to say upon the subject. I avoided all questions and answered no letters.

One year ago the subject of dress was again presented before me. I saw that our sisters were departing from the simplicity of the gospel. The very ones who had felt that the reform dress required unnecessary labor, and who had claimed that they would not be influenced by the spirit of the world, had now taken up the fashions they had once condemned. Their dresses were arranged with all the unnecessary ornaments of worldlings in a manner unbecoming to Christians and entirely at variance with our faith.

Thus has been developed the pride of heart indulged by a people that profess to have come out from the world and to be separate. Inspiration declares that the friendship of the world is enmity with God; yet His professed people have expended their God-given time and means upon the altar of fashion. (4T 637-8).

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The reform dress was now to be laid aside. God had given His children more than fifteen years to adopt the dress which He saw as best for those who profess to represent Him. Some had worn it and worn it right, others had turned it into dress deform, still others had refused to touch it.

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The question may be asked: "Why has this dress been laid side, and for what reason has dress reform ceased to be advocated?" The reason for this change I will here briefly state. While many of our sisters accepted this reform from principle, others opposed the simple, healthful style of dress which it advocated. It required much labor to introduce this reform among our people. It was not enough to present before our sisters the advantages of such a dress and to convince them that it would meet the approval of God. Fashion had so strong a hold upon them that they were very slow to break away from its control, even to obey the dictates of reason and conscience. And many who professed to accept the reform made no change in their wrong habits of dress, except in shortening the skirts and clothing the limbs.

Nor was this all. Some who adopted the reform were not content to show by example the advantages of the dress, giving, when asked, their reasons for adopting it, and letting the matter rest there. They sought to control others' conscience by their own. If they wore it, others must put it on. They forgot that none were to be compelled to wear the reform dress. (4T 635-6).

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Though this reform was not to be a test question, there were some who tried to make it so. They constantly urged it on their sisters and were unhappy with Sister White for not pushing it.

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Much unhappy feeling was created by those who were constantly urging the reform dress upon their sisters. With extremists, this reform seemed to constitute the sum and substance of their religion. It was the theme of conversation and the burden of their hearts; and their minds were thus diverted from God and the truth. They failed to cherish the spirit of Christ and manifested a great lack of true courtesy. Instead of prizing the dress for its real advantages, they seemed to be proud of its singularity. Perhaps no question has ever come up among us which has caused such development of character as has the dress reform. (4T 435-6 emphasis added).

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The reform dress was gone. God took it away. In 1897 a group of Adventist women wanted to return to wearing the reform dress, and Sister White was asked if they should do so. She answered:

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The Lord has not moved upon any of our sisters to adopt the reform dress. The difficulties that we once had to meet are not to be brought in again. There was so much resistance among our own people that it was removed from them. It would then have proved a blessing. But there must be no branching out now into singular forms of dress....

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I beg of our people to walk carefully and circumspectly before the God. Follow the custom of dress in health reform, but do not again introduce the short dress and pants unless you have the word of the Lord for it. (5MR 405-6).

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God had not left His people without direction after removing the reform dress.

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If all our sisters would adopt a simple, unadorned dress of modest length, the uniformity thus established would be far more pleasing to God, and would exert a more salutary influence on the world, than the diversity presented four years ago. As our sisters would not generally accept the reform dress as it should be worn, another, less objectionable style is now presented. It is free from needless trimmings, free from the looped-up, tied back overskirts. It consists of a plain sack or loose-fitting basque, and skirt, the latter short enough to avoid the mud and filth of the streets. The material should be free from large plaids and figures, and plain in color. The same attention should be given to the clothing of the limbs as with the short dress. (4T 640:1).

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In 1897, Sister White clarified the above statement.

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Some have supposed that the skirt and sacque mentioned in Testimonies, Vol. 4, page 640, was the pattern that all should adopt. This is not so, but something as simple as this should be used. No one precise style has been given me as the exact rule to guide all in their dress. Should our sisters think they must adopt a uniform style of dress, controversy would arise, and those whose minds should be wholly given to the work of the third angel's message would spend their time making aggressive warfare on the outward dress, to the neglect of that inward piety, the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. (MS 167, 1897 found in appendix of The Story of our Health Message).

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It is now more than one hundred years later. Are we to return to the reform dress? NO! God has left things just as they were in 1897; we have no word from Him that we are to return to the reform dress. Is dress reform viable today? After all, we no longer wear trailing skirts, crinolines, and corsets. Fashions have changed greatly in 100 years, but they are still Fashion. She is still a tyrant ruling the world. The world is still full of her devotees. The church is still full of her devotees. And there is much in current fashion which is harmful to health, but in different ways than tight lacing and heavy skirts. What we will do is search the counsel given for the principles and then see how they apply today. We are sill God's peculiar people.

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Oh, the pride that was shown me of God's professed people. It has increased every year, until it is now impossible to designate professed Advent Sabbath-keepers from all the world around them. Much, I saw was expended for ribbons and laces for the bonnets, collars, and other needless articles to decorate the body, while Jesus, the King of Glory, who gave His life to redeem them, wore a crown of thorns. This was the way their Master's sacred head was decorated. He was a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." "He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed." And the very ones that professed to be washed by the blood of Jesus, can dress up, and decorate their poor, mortal bodies, yet dare to profess to be the followers of the holy, self-denying, humble Pattern. Oh, I wish that all could see this in the light that God sees it, and showed it to me. It seemed to much for me to bear, to feel the anguish of soul that I felt as I beheld it. "God's people," said the angel, "are peculiar; such he is purifying unto Himself." I saw that the outside appearance was an index to the heart. When hung with ribbons, collars, and needless things,it plainly shows that all this is in the heart, and unless that such persons are cleansed from their sins, they can never see God, for the pure in heart alone will see Him. (4SGb 21-2).

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While the issue of dress is important to the individual believer, we must be careful not to make it out as a more important issue than it really is. Rather than being the issue itself, dress points to the larger issues of extravagance and sensible living.

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Selected Messages Book 3, page 254, paragraph 4
Chapter Title: Dress and Adornment
The Sabbath question is a test that will come to the whole world. We need nothing to come in now to make a test for God's people that shall make more severe for them the test they already have. The enemy would be pleased to get up issues now to divert the minds of the people and get them into controversy over the subject of dress. Let our sisters dress plainly, as many do, having the dress of good material, durable, modest, appropriate for this age, and let not the dress question fill the mind. . . .

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Testimony To the Brethren in Western New York, page 11, paragraph 2
My position upon health and dress reform is unchanged. I have been shown that God gave the dress reform to our sisters as a blessing, but some have turned it into a curse, making the dress question a subject of talk and of thought, while they neglected the internal work, the adorning of their souls by personal piety. Some have thought religion consisted in wearing the reform dress, while their spirits were unsubdued by grace. They were jealous and fault finding, watching and criticizing the dress of others, and in this neglected their own souls and lost their piety.

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Ellen G. White Volume 4 The Australian Years 1891-1900, page 333, paragraph 2
Chapter Title: Sunnyside and Beyond--1897

The dress question is not to be our present truth. . . . I beg of our people to walk carefully and circumspectly before God.

Follow the customs in dress so far as they conform to health principles.

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Perhaps this is the best counsel on dress yet.

Paul

[This message has been edited by Paul Beach (edited December 02, 2000).]

for possible further discussion by the whosoever will.

I strongly beleive that we should be dressed for Church!
What say ye?

Better then the alternative.

We attended church a week ago yesterday...a friend of ours was being baptized. We have been having home-church for a while now, as it is so discouraging to go to church. Well, that Sabbath was no exception. When they took up the "Lamb's Offering" (I am not a fan of that either, I think it another way for them to get more money out of people, as well as teach the kids to be beggers :()The pastor's wife walked around with their two year old, collecting money, and she had on a low cut dress so that when she bent over at each aisle with him, you could see it all.

It really angered me. People in the world pay to see such things. Our husbands, sons and fathers come to church and are forced to see it! and what is worse - it is the Pastor's wife putting on the show.

Then, after our friend was baptized, a couple from Czech were brought in to the church on profession of faith. The woman's dress was so bad, my husband walked out in protest....it couldn't have been much worse. She looked like she was headed for the bar.

All I can say is that I'm so thankful we can have home-church...