Fashions of the Plain People
June 21, 2017 9:24 PM   Subscribe

"Amish dress practices are slow to change because they are viewed as religious precepts. But change they do, and not only for utilitarian reasons. Amish fashion – change for the sake of change – exists, but it is subtle, slow, and miniscule. [...] Individual signs of rebellion or boundary testing include, for women, wearing prayer kapps that are smaller and thus expose more of the ear, kapps with untied strings, kapps with pronounced heart-shaped designs on the back, dresses in brighter colours, decorative pins on jacket lapels, and small frills and ruffles on sleeves."

Amish Clothes FAQ
About the Amish

Previously on MetaFilter, the popularity of "bonnet rippers," Amish-set romance novels, amongst evangelical Christians
posted by Eyebrows McGee (31 comments total) 63 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is fascinating and delightful! Many thanks.
posted by retronic at 9:43 PM on June 21, 2017


I used to live in a heavily Amish/Mennonite area, so this is relevant to my interests.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:50 PM on June 21, 2017


Buckle up, this is long and because it's late I'm not going to edit.

I love the topic of Amish clothes. More than you can imagine.

Some things to add. Amish and Mennonite are anabaptist religions, which means baptism happens in adulthood, rather than at birth. This piece focuses on Old Order Amish, and the Beachy Amish and Mennonites aren't covered. Beachy Amish was started in the 1920s, by Old Order Amish who disagreed on several points (theology, technology, etc). Some consider the Beachy Amish to actually be Mennonite (I'll let you guess who thinks this...). Amish divided from the Mennonite sect. Each is named after the men who are credited with founding them. Oh, the Mennonite groups are generally less orthodox than the Amish. Each community makes and maintains its own rules.

So, those who are unbaptized may dress (and otherwise live) outside of the strict rules. Once baptized, breaking the rules risks a being called to appear and defend yourself in church, and continuing to flout the rules risks a bann (shunning). One can choose to be baptized into a less strict ordnung with no religious consequences (your folks might be disappointed, but they know it's better than not being baptized and it's WAY better than being baptized and not adhering to the rules, because being shunned means your family isn't supposed to see or talk to you, it sucks).

It seems like nearly everyone has heard of Rumspringa, which the article addresses. Girls usually remain at home with their family and boys often have more freedom/resources to spend their time before baptism outside the home. Whether that's renting an apartment or staying with unbaptized friend is decided on an individual/family basis. Deciding to remain unbaptized is more common for men than women, but quite uncommon. Some boys even buy and drive cars during rumspringa, but sell them before being baptized. Girls tend to continue to dress more according to the ordnung while boys are more likely to adopt the clothes of the English (that's outsiders). Also, unbaptized teenage Amish/Mennonite boys have reputations in some communities for drinking and smoking, of course this isn't universal.

Though Kraybill (he's written great books about Old Order Amish, get them, they're great!) is discussing one group in a very specific location, it's easy to assume that this group is representative of all Amish communities. Where this is interesting for clothes is you can often guess how strict a person's group is by how they dress. What is rebellion in an orthodox community might be de riguer in different group. For women: longer, darker dresses are more plain/strict. Any dress with a (usually floral) pattern belongs to a woman who is not a member of the strictest groups in her sect (usually Beachy or Mennonite, old Order Amish women almost always were solid dresses). The bigger the pattern, the more liberal the group, ditto brighter or paler colors. There can be some flexibility for age/baptism status. Also observe the size of the kapp (headcovering) the larger it is, I mean, the more hair it covers, the more plain/strict the group. It's not uncommon to see women or girls wearing pants and tiny little kapps in Reading Market in Philadelphia, they are usually Mennonite. As the author mentioned, heart shaped, strings untied, those are a thing. Some of the kapps don't even have strings, they're held on with bobby pins. The kapp serves to make a woman's head holy in the eyes of God for prayer (I don't remember which passage that's from, but it's biblical, and a woman might want to pray at any time, so wearing the kapp means she's always ready.)

The apron (according to many Amish and Mennonite women) serves a fantastic purpose of drawing attention away from pregnant women, because it's universal. The author doesn't discuss the cape, which is usually worn for church and is also said to distract from breastfeeding and keeps all women more equal in appearance.

Fun fact about technology - many Amish families use electricity in rented homes. Using it in a home you own would be forbidden unless there was some huge need (major medical issue might get your family a pass, but only for that use, not for tv. Gas is used for refrigerators and lights in many homes. Also, there is often a phone in the barn, and families can use a neighbor's phone in emergencies)

Oh my word, I could go on and on but I need to sleep, so I will.

For more, check out books by John Hostetler, Steven Nolt, and of course, Kraybill.
posted by bilabial at 10:38 PM on June 21, 2017 [84 favorites]


I have seen Amish Hell, and it looks like an Arc'teryx catalog.
posted by Beholder at 11:04 PM on June 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


This was interesting, and thanks to bilabial for the long comment and author recommendations.

I'm a Quaker, and some Quakers wear plain dress, which these days generally involves adopting an Amish or Mennonite style of dress (though usually with zippers). So, dark pants, suspenders, collarless shirts, and broadbrimmed hats for men, solid-colored dresses and hair covering of some kind for women. It's less common in my liberal branch of Quakerism for women to take up plain dress, I think in part because of the greater restrictions on women's dress and because of the retrograde gender roles associated with it. When I go to larger Quaker gatherings like yearly meeting or the upcoming Friends General Conference Gathering, I will usually see a couple of men in some form of plain dress, but I've only personally known one woman who wore plain dress—and she was a fellow-travelling Mennonite, a queer woman who had tie-dyed her head covering.

Sometimes the Quaker adoption of Amish or Mennonite style plain dress is born of expediency, because it's what's available, and it's also what says, "I have stepped outside of the mainstream culture for religious reasons and I want to make that visible." But sometimes it's from ignorance—a lot of present-day Quakers simply don't know that the Quaker tradition of plain dress was very different from the approach taken by the Amish and Mennonites.

I did some reading on plain dress years ago, and one thing I remember was one of the writers talking about Amish girls "rebelling" in semi-cyclical ways. If their mothers tied their strings, the girls didn't, but in another generation tied strings might be back in vogue, as each generation sought to find its own identity within the constraints they lived with.

I often travel by train, and there are nearly always Amish people on board as well. On one long trip, half our car was taking up with a group of Amish people traveling together. In the evening, they would completely take over the club car, hauling out amazing quantities of homemade food and settling around the tables to laugh and play cards. We were like, "Man, those Amish people really know how to party!"

My friend and I enjoyed chatting with the folks near our seats; I had my three young kids with me, and the Amish folk had a lot of kids with them, and there's nothing like the sympathetic look one parent gives another over the head of an over-tired kid melting down for bonding across cultural divides.

Quakers are often mistaken for the Amish. Every Quaker I know has a story about someone confusing the two. I once had a woman say to me, "Wait a minute... you're not a real Quaker! I've seen you drive a car!" We often joke that if we need an advertising slogan, "Quakers: We're Not Amish!" would be a very fitting one.
posted by Orlop at 12:28 AM on June 22, 2017 [58 favorites]


a woman might want to pray at any time, so wearing the kapp means she's always ready.

Occasionally, I shop at a grocery which employs a bunch of Amish women. They'll be stocking shelves and one will start singing a hymn and those nearby will join in. Always ready, I guess.
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:54 AM on June 22, 2017 [6 favorites]


The kapp serves to make a woman's head holy in the eyes of God for prayer (I don't remember which passage that's from, but it's biblical, and a woman might want to pray at any time, so wearing the kapp means she's always ready.)

Probably 1 Corinthians 11:5 - I'm not aware of any other passage that refers to women's heads and prayer and I used to know them all quite well for reasons.

I briefly worked for an Amish couple several years ago. In the area where I live - not sure if this is universal or is still the case - they only attended school as long as it was legally required. They couple I worked for were very hard workers and but had some surprising deficits in general knowledge - like the fact that South America and South Africa are different - and did not care.

I always thought this really reduced their options at rumspringa. My impression (could be mistaken) is that most of the rebellion of rumspringa involves sex and drugs, instead of taking a college class or going to a library and reading up on evolution or other religions. Having read this article, though, I wonder if there's more variety in Amish practices w/r/t education than I had guessed.
posted by bunderful at 5:41 AM on June 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


A while back, I went to the local history museum at a nearby town which used to be mostly populated by people who were Amish, but who have steadily been shifting to Mennonite (and less and less traditional Mennonite) over a number of generations. The lady in charge of the local history museum, an 80-something woman in modern clothes whose name was Mrs. Yoder, told us that the local Amish community had just ruled that it was ok for women to use small amounts of red fabric in quilts. She said this was a big change, and it had been controversial: using red fabric was seen to be calling attention to ones self in a prideful way. So anyway, the only other people in the museum were a late-middle-aged couple from Alabama. They were in town because he had something to do with crop dusting: I can't remember whether he actually flew the crop duster plane or sold crop-dusting-related supplies or what, but they were in town to do business with farmers. The woman of the couple said something to Mrs. Yoder about how she so envied the Amish, with their Christ-like simplicity and community and close relationship to God. And Mrs. Yoder said to her very pointedly, "the Amish believe that individuality is a sin. Being Amish is wonderful as long as what you want for yourself is exactly the same as what the community wants for you, but it's really painful if you ever want anything else. And not everyone is cut out to be a farmer." I got the feeling that she had heard this a lot and that she didn't have a lot of patience for people who envied Amish people's simplicity and closeness to Jesus without focusing on the costs.

So anyway, a thing that I have learned by living near Amish people is that teenaged Amish girls really like to skateboard. My friend had her wedding reception at a community center in a park in an Amish area, and the park was full of Amish girls on skateboards. I think they were mostly there to gawk at the wedding party and guests, but they definitely knew their way around a skateboard.
In the area where I live - not sure if this is universal or is still the case - they only attended school as long as it was legally required.
Yeah, I think that's typically true. There's actually a famous Supreme Court case in which the Amish received an exemption from compulsory education laws, because forcing their kids to stay in school until they're 16 would violate their religious freedom. They get a solid elementary school education, and that's it. Interestingly, while the Mennonites I know are very interested in the rest of the world and often pretty well-traveled, I still hear stories about families being dubious about the value of too much education. Everyone goes to high school, and a lot of young people go to a two-year Mennonite college, but it might be a little unusual to get a four-year degree, and people might not totally approve.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:11 AM on June 22, 2017 [22 favorites]


The comparison between Quakers and Amish is amusing me, because one night last week I had a dream that I, who am a Quaker attender, had become a plain dress Quaker, and my friend Christine, who is a Mennonite, had become the pope. Not, as she clarified when I questioned her, the Catholic Pope, but the Mennonite Pope, as the Mennonites had decided they needed one. I addressed her as Pope Christine, we spoke exclusively in French (in real life I speak a little French and she doesn't speak it at all), and she drew on her experience with Mennonite cape dresses to help me design a flattering and stylish plain Quaker dress. Yeah, I don't know either. My dreams would have kept Freud up at night. Don't even get me started on the one I had last night.

There was never really a specific prescribed plain dress for Quakers. In the beginning, Quakers dressed like everyone else, except that their clothing was simply cut and plainly made in sober colours, i.e, gray, brown, black. It was possible to be well-dressed by contemporary standards within these constraints. Nineteenth century American poet, abolitionist and Quaker John Greenleaf Whittier's black suits were made of good broadcloth and made by the best tailor in Philadelphia, and he wore a stovepipe hat, not the old-fashioned broad-brim that had become customary for Quaker men because it had been a contemporary style of hat when Quakerism first began. As the centuries went on, mainstream fashions changed and the traditional Quaker plain dress became more and more out of keeping with it. Many were still wearing clothes based on seventeenth-century fashions in the late nineteenth century.

In 1900, Quakers arrived at a general consensus to discontinue the practice, because the plain dress had lost its original purpose and had become something that excluded others and made Quakers an oddity, which was never the point. The plain speech was set aside for the same reason -- everyone now used "you", which used to be the formal, respectful pronoun, and had ceased entirely to use the familiar pronouns thee and thou -- which meant the original Quaker practice of using thee and thou with everyone in order to treat everyone equally had lost its point. The change meant that Quakers no longer had a distinctive marker, but then one never hears Quakers talking about being a separate people ("Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate" -- 2 Corinthians 6:17) the way the Amish and Mennonites do. Quaker emphasis is on equality, not separation, and the practice of emphasizing one's own separation is antithetical to treating others as equals.

Some individual Quakers continued to wear the plain dress and use the plain speech for the rest of their lives, but among most Quakers, as twentieth-century American novelist Elizabeth Gray Vining wrote in her autobiography, the plain dress was replaced by "a general dowdiness", which made me cackle when I read it, because it is so apt. I am a longtime attender in Toronto, and I have never seen a traditional-style plain dress Quaker in real life. I have, however, seen a lot of baggy t-shirts and and shapeless dresses and things like socks worn with Crocs.

It seems to me if one really wants to follow the Quaker values of simplicity, equality, and concern for the environment in our times, the way to practice plain dress is to do it the way the original Quakers did it: wear a plain and simple version of the kind of clothing everyone else wears. A Quaker woman who practices plain dress in this way could very own a well-cut and flattering little black dress.

Looked at in this light, the Mennonite approach to dress and other lifestyle choices has always made more sense to me than the Amish approach: their idea is to live plainly and simply and separately by contemporary standards, just as the Amish originally did, before they began to cling to specific and outmoded styles and technologies.
posted by orange swan at 6:36 AM on June 22, 2017 [29 favorites]


This is a fascinating article, but I have questions.

black zipperless trousers with a ‘broad fall’ flap across the front that is fastened by a button

Hold up, why do men get a button?! All of this stuff about buttons and pockets leading you to the devil, but all of the men have a button across the front of their pants? Is this all pants?

For instance, for many years baby boys typically wore dresses until they were toilet trained, but that practice is changing, as some parents worry that a dress on a baby boy may lead to gender confusion when he grows up. A more progressive mother, with a wink to tradition, may take her baby boy to church in a dress one time and thereafter dress him in trousers and shirt.

Okay, this is completely paradoxical and seems heavily influenced by modernity.
posted by desuetude at 6:51 AM on June 22, 2017 [5 favorites]


I attended college in a small town in rural Ohio. The town itself was not populated by the Amish but there were two or three communities who lived in the heavily wooded heartland ten or fifteen miles past the town's Wal-Mart and unofficial demarcation for where "town" ended and "the sticks" began.

When I was a sophomore I started working at the Local Paint Store which was nestled in the middle of the busiest of the town's three shopping areas. Our clientele were mostly professional painters and cabinet makers, with a couple of commercial crews thrown in for good measure. Then there was the weird amalgam of all three: the Amish.

Growing up in a different area of rural Ohio (and often visiting their larger communities to eat their donuts, my lawd) I was no stranger to the Amish but before my time at the Local Paint Store I had never been in a position to Do Business With Them which is a bit different than visiting their enclaves, eating their donuts, and perusing their woodworking. They weren't bad customers but ...

They would roll up in a van, about 10-12 at once. Sometimes their drivers would come in with them. The drivers I never liked; they usually smelled like cheap jerky and cigarettes. The Amish weren't without their own unique bouquet, either. With ten or twelve of them in a small shop all at once it quickly smelled like sawdust, body odor, and horses. Not terrible, actually, and kind of a welcome relief from the usual background smell of paint thinner and Fast Orange.

Anyway, the Amish would come in and there would be a group of them but usually it was one guy doing the buying - either the oldest of the lot (as far as I could tell, beards make it hard to guess) or the guy who everyone knew would be the oldest guy in a few years, kind of like the Old Guy's Apprentice maybe. I don't know if this is a thing, but it was the pattern for this crew. This is where things could go one of two directions. Either they'd buy a large quantity of one or two stock products (eg, primer, basic contractor white paint, standard color stain, stain thinner, etc) or they might go off menu and that's where it got uncomfortable.

Like, for example, the Old Guy With only Seven Full Fingers who wanted me to order him three 55 gallon drums of xylene because he thought it would be cheaper to heat his house with xylene than kerosene (the system would not let me order that much xylene at once without prior authorization and the deal was nixed) or the other time the Old Guy's Apprentice tried to get me to sell him my half-full containers of paint tint that he would use to mix his own stains.

On the face of it, these weren't uncommon interactions for your Local Paint Store but these Amish guys would haggle you to the penny and walk away if you didn't get to the very lowest amount they were willing to pay. Which was a pain in the ass because, as the article mentions, the Amish are patient and you might not even realize that you've entered into negotiations and before you know it you're about to close shop, you've been circling around a deal with these guys for two hours and you still have to whip up 50 gallons of paint for non-Amish Greg who's going to send his guy around back for a pick up in about ten minutes and whose definition of patience does not exist.

And all the while they would be perfectly nice and polite and reasonable but the time commitment was a major factor when they came to visit.

And, sometimes, we had to visit them.

On New Years Day in my junior year I rolled into the Local Paint Store and was told I had to go out on delivery. Usually I didn't do deliveries but I was the only in the shop who didn't drink and so was the only person actually capable of driving a heavy vehicle.

"It's a bunch of stuff for Amish Cabinet Guy - he doesn't have an address."

"Do you have directions or ... ?"

"Uh, you know 23, right? Well, two miles past the intersection of 23 and Thornridge there's a road that ... well it's there but you have to look for it - you'll see it from the road. It's on the right. If you get to the $local_bar you've gone too far. You'll be fine."

I set out with thirty odd gallons of stain, some brushes, and a ton of rags.

I drove for thirty minutes to where my manager sent me. No road. I drove up to the $local_bar and back. I turned back. I hit Thornridge. I turned left where there was a marked road and was greeted at the turn in the road by a deer carcass, skinned toe to neck, its head completely intact. Which, though I've never hunted, I've never heard of a hunted buck who was allowed to keep his rack. It wigged me out, but I persisted.

Eventually I found the "road" my manager had described. It was a dirt lane, obscured by the kind of little bridge they build out in the middle of nowhere that is made to safely convey large vehicles over a ditch but may or may not have any safety standards in mind after constructed. Miraculously my van made it over and I was heading up, up, up into the hills and further into the woods.

My work shift had started at two. With all my adventuring the sun was getting worryingly low behind the tall trees. After fifteen minutes of creeping up the dirt lane the trees parted and I came into a clearing where a house was under construction. And, look, there are people! Children! They're cavorting and playing, civilization has been found!

I approach the half-dozen or so children with gusto. "Hey guys, I'm trying to find ..." The kids have stopped cavorting. They have stopped laughing. They are frozen, staring at me wide eyed. "Where can ..." The oldest one points to the house.

I turn around to go back to the van to unload my stuff, drop it off and get the fuck out. When I turn back around with my cargo the kids are gone. What the fuck. Using my dolly I get the paint into the house, which is clearly under construction. It's getting dark, there are no lights because duh, Amish. I make my through, trying to find a grownup to show me where to put the paint and give me a signature. Two rooms over I see a light, and a shadow.

"Hello?" I say tentatively.

No response.

"I'm just going to ... I'll bring your stuff over here."

I make my way toward the light and hear a "KA-CHUNK, KA-CHUNK." I freeze - what the fuck goes "KA-CHUNK, KA-CHUNK" the middle of an under construction house in Amish Country. I go forward, there it is again, "KA-CHUNK, KA-CHUNK" and faster now, and there's a shadow from this one light and a hulking figure stoops low to duck underneath the archway that separates the room.

I yelled, oh boy did I yell.

There in front of me was a bearded Amish man on drywall stilts, holding a trowel and spade, covered head to toe in drywall dust.

"Sorry to scare you," he says cheerfully, "need me to sign?"

I fumbled with my pen, gave him the receipt, smiled grimly as I tried to think of a way to retain some semblance of dignity and decided that the best course of action would be to not look him in the eyes and drop off the rest of the material as fast as my dolly would carry me.

Of course I laughed on the way home as I thought about what had actually happened. But reader, let me tell you, there's nothing fucking funny in the moment about a giga-Amish coming at you full blast when you're on your last nerve and only trying to do your goddamn job.
posted by Tevin at 7:12 AM on June 22, 2017 [55 favorites]



Amongst the Amish folks out our way (NE Ohio), I'm seeing some red and VERY bright blue shirts and dresses, and I have seen yellow, tho only on a young girl.

My sister and her friends (heh) are New England Quaker, and they don't go in for flashy styles, but I don't know of anyone actually adopting the full-on plain style of the Amish, much less the hair covering.

Meanwhile, back in Ohio, I can't address skateboards but these amish scooters have become really popular, even among some neighboring English. Some of the kids can really haul ass.

I used to ride The Dog a lot between SW and NE Ohio and SE Michigan. Sometimes the driver would stop in a very funky unmarked location and let an Amish cat off the bus. There might be a buggy waiting for him, or he might just start walking. Once in while, they'd stop under some rural overpass to find someone waiting to be picked up. I don't know how they negotiated payment -- maybe Greyhound offered some kind of pass.

Finally, this is another opportunity to remind the world that there are more Amish in OHIO than in Pennsylvania -- longtime PR out of Pennsylvania notwithstanding. Holmes Co. Ohio is the largest concentration; Lancaster Co. PA is third.
 
posted by Herodios at 7:12 AM on June 22, 2017 [7 favorites]


My son's fiancé hails from northern Indiana, which is the Amish area of the state (she, herself, is not Amish). She has all sorts of funny little stories about the local Amish. One of the funniest images she relates is about this local Mexican restaurant which is regularly completely encircled by the buggies of the local Amish dining out. I didn't think the Amish did such things like going to restaurants, but I guess every area is different. And, yeah, she has Rumspringa stories.

In my neck of the woods, there are construction crews that bill themselves as "Amish Builders." The show up in vans, dressed as Amish. But, they use power tools and every other modern building apparatus. They're usually more expensive than a "non-Amish" crew, too. I've often wondered if they really are Amish, or if it's a clever marketing tool?
posted by Thorzdad at 7:35 AM on June 22, 2017


wearing prayer kapps that are smaller and thus expose more of the ear, kapps with untied strings, kapps with pronounced heart-shaped designs on the back, dresses in brighter colours, decorative pins on jacket lapels, and small frills and ruffles on sleeves. In addition, women’s dresses are now longer than they were in the past. The waistbands, which had been dropped toward the hips, are now at the waist. The pleats on the sleeves of short-sleeved summer dresses have changed and, occasionally, teenage girls add decorative buttons to those sleeves.

I do love the seemingly universal human compulsion toward the creation of fashion. It's not the sartorial details that are really important (whether it's how you tie your kapp or what's on the runaway), it's the behavior.
posted by desuetude at 8:12 AM on June 22, 2017 [12 favorites]


I'm always very conflicted about what I think about these collectivistic, conformist type of communities. On the one hand they seem to be much better at avoiding the alienation and, I don't know, "lack of meaning" that seems to be really prevalent in the world at large. On the other hand I can't really imagine living with such strict rules. It wouldn't really matter in some areas-I've always dressed more to meet expectations than to express myself, so I could live with a dress code-but as a general principle it feels irrational and oppressive.

On the third hand, I'm gay and there are very few strict religious where I'd be welcome, aside from going celibate and joining a Roman monastery.

(Aside-why are there so many Quakers on Metafilter? I've never met one that I know of, are there a lot of you concentrated in a certain part of the country and none in others?)
posted by bracems at 8:21 AM on June 22, 2017 [5 favorites]


So what was your major at Heidelberg, Tevin?

For the non-Ohioans who enjoyed Tevin's story, US-23 runs right through Ohio from north to south. I personally think of it as the high-speed alternate route for the annual TOSRV bike ride from Columbus to Portsmouth and back, but it's also High Street (in name and function) through Columbus and the campus of an Ohio State University (I can't be more specific) and also how one gets from Toledo to Ann Arbor.

"Amish Builders" . . . I've often wondered if they really are Amish, or if it's a clever marketing tool?

Both/and. It is for sure a marketing angle and there's definitely some fakirs out there. But here on the east side of Cleveland, we're about 25 miles from the nearest large settlements of plain folks, and there are crews of builders who come up in vans from Middleburgh and the like who are really Amish builders. Whether they are really better or cheaper than the alternative is another question.

We have a lot of Amish cabinetry on offer around here as well, and that racket also admits of both camps -- the real and the fake.

why are there so many Quakers on Metafilter? I've never met one that I know of, are there a lot of you concentrated in a certain part of the country and none in others?

Ohio's history is full of Quakers, Shakers, Amish, Mennonites, and other non-conformists. Ohio was the Wild Wild West right after the Revolution and occupied a place in the cultural imagination that the plains states west of the Mississippi later took over. People with 'weird' ideas came here to make a go on their own -- many stayed and so did their ancestors (I myself am descended from a long line of Shakers.)

Most of the Quakers probably came here from Pennsylvania, which of course was founded by Quakers.

Earlham College across the border in Indiana is affiliated with the Quakers. Lots of Quaker action around Cincinnati, and elsewhere in Ohio in the 19th c., dealing with the Underground Railroad.
 
posted by Herodios at 8:37 AM on June 22, 2017 [4 favorites]


This article was fascinating. I never knew that the strap beards specifically avoided mustaches because they had had military connotations. And the women have to use straight pins to fix their clothes for church? Good Lord, fastening brooches have been around since the Bronze Age! Still, I expect you're disinclined to nod off or even relax your body in the pew if you think you might get pinpricked, or worse, accidentally lose one and get your whole outfit in disarray.

As a student of archaeology and anthropology (once upon a time) I always like to see stories that push back against the idea of unchanging cultures. The rapid pace of technological change in the past five hundred years has given many people the idea that it is possible for humans to live changeless, timeless lives, and that in fact that's what people in remote areas are doing, because they are wiser and/or lesser than us. But cultures do change, all of them.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:04 AM on June 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


(I myself am descended from a long line of Shakers.)

Yeah, yeah.
posted by glasseyes at 9:10 AM on June 22, 2017 [11 favorites]


Oh, straight pins: normal fastening for women's clothes up to about the 17th century I think. "Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear," says John Donne, to his mistress going to bed. "Pin money" wasn't some sort of figure of speech but necessary expenditure else you couldn't get dressed, no matter how much silk and brocade and jewels you had.

Not that the Amish had those in their beginnings but I guess they still needed the pins.
posted by glasseyes at 9:20 AM on June 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


I love this, thank you. No matter what you wear, it signifies something. It's as fundamental a part of being human as language, and as naturally evolved in response to neurology and physics in equal parts with the path-dependent customs we inherit and change.
posted by bigbigdog at 9:57 AM on June 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


I am a Mennonite, a member of the largest Mennonite denomination in the US ("Mennonite Church, USA, aka MCUSA"). We're generally seen as the most progressive branch of the Anabaptists in the US, although there is a wide variety among us. Most women in the two predecessor groups that formed MCUSA stopped wearing caps in the 1950s; when the change came, it came very quickly.

You couldn't tell I was a Mennonite from how I dress, but many MCUSA Mennonites do favor simplicity and durability of dress and fashion. There's no prescription for or against it, but it's likely that a MCUSA woman will leave her hair undyed. Likewise, wearing clothes with really conspicuous fashion labels. I doubt that anyone would write a popular article about clothing among MCUSA Mennonites -- but as a research topic it's there, waiting, I think, for the right ethnographer or fashion researcher.
posted by willF at 10:29 AM on June 22, 2017 [9 favorites]


Herodius, Wilmington College is a Quaker college in Ohio. When I went there in the 70s, it was one of 2 schools in Ohio with an Agriculture degree. The other one was in Columbus. Some of my Quaker classmates, faculty and staff used plain speaking at home, and plain dress pretty much meant dark socks and sandals, at least in summer.
posted by theora55 at 12:43 PM on June 22, 2017


Wilmington College is a Quaker college in Ohio.

Yes, it is. The father of one of my wife's friends was a 1940s Wilmington grad -- and a CO in WWII -- a tough row to hoe, as it were. I don't think he was an ag, tho.

Oddly enough, the Cincinnati Bengals used to practice there when the team was new. Dunno why.

Nothing to do with Amish fashion, either.

posted by Herodios at 1:28 PM on June 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


"Having read this article, though, I wonder if there's more variety in Amish practices w/r/t education than I had guessed."

Definitely, especially if you include the broader group of Anabaptists/Plain People, such as Mennonites, Hutterites, and the little-known ACs (which we have a lot of around here and jokingly call "Amish in the city"). There's a 4-year Mennonite college at Goshen, and there are any number of Mennonite Ph.D.s running around (who are easy to spot because 75% of them are named Yoder and most of the rest Swartzentruber!). The ACs, being city Plain People, go in for more education, even for their daughters, who make up a surprisingly large portion of nursing programs around here. (Also things like audiology, a lot of "caring professions," especially if they involve working with children.) Some Amish (and Plain People) stop schooling as soon as possible; others may pursue quite a bit. It depends on the local Ordnung (community rule).

"One of the funniest images she relates is about this local Mexican restaurant which is regularly completely encircled by the buggies of the local Amish dining out. I didn't think the Amish did such things like going to restaurants, but I guess every area is different." ... But, they use power tools and every other modern building apparatus. They're usually more expensive than a "non-Amish" crew, too. I've often wondered if they really are Amish, or if it's a clever marketing tool?"

So the organizing principle for Amish communities isn't so much "no modern technology" as "nothing that tends to harm the wholeness of the community" (also things that remove focus from Jesus, also specific historical things like mustaches that hark to their heritage). So owning cars is generally bad because it enables people to drive all over the place and weakens the bonds of the community, but riding in them may be necessary or desirable. (Owning cars also promotes individuality and pride; if an Amish group did decide cars were okay they'd probably all have to get navy blue Honda Civics or something.) Similarly there's no problem with an Amish person taking an airplane to visit family members in another settlement in another state (if they're allowed to have picture ID, I guess; some aren't). Most Amish don't have a phone in the house because it removes focus from the family and community and puts it on distant phone-strangers you call or who call you, but it's not unusual for Amish to have a "phone shack" on their property, usually out near wherever the wires run, that can be used to call an "Englischer" friend for a ride or to call 911 or similar -- since it's outside the house, it can't intrude on the family and can only be used deliberately and with forethought.

So it's actually fairly common for Amish to use certain kinds of powered machinery especially in men's work -- carpentry and farming in particular. (Powered farm machinery is usually gas-powered, not electric.) The virtue isn't so much in using old technology for the sake of old technology but avoiding pride and damage to the community; many communities decide that it's okay to have various powered machinery. But there's a lot more resistance to powered women's work, such as sewing machines, even when the arguments are otherwise the same.

Anyway, there's nothing particularly community-breaking about dining at a Mexican restaurant, so why not! Some groups prefer not to do any business with Englischer businesses if they can avoid it, especially for young people who might be easily dazzled by the local Wal-Mart, but many groups will shop in Englischer stores and whatnot. Where I went to college, if you went to the Meijer at 4 a.m. (possibly a little drunk) it was not at all unusual to run into Amish who'd come up from the nearby Amish settlement in their buggies, to shop before the workday started. The store even had some hitching posts in a field next to the store. (We usually saw them buying staple foods, thread, and yarn, and sometimes farming supplies.) They were slightly less-strict Amish who had more colors in their clothes than the more-strict Amish, but still pretty strict in their dress.

One thing that's sorta interesting in recent years is that while the Mennonites have a missionary history, the Amish really don't, and have always marked themselves out as quite distinct from broader American society, but in recent years it's become more common for groups of Amish men to go provide assistance after major disasters that aren't local to them. Vanloads of Amish carpenters went down to Louisiana after Katrina to volunteer with cleanup and emergency shelters, which was kind-of a new thing to happen, and it's kind-of interesting what that says about shifting ideas of community in Amish culture -- maybe the US as a whole (and not just local Englischers) is part of their wider community now in some conceptions? Helping people far, far outside the local community isn't necessarily seen as harmful to the cohesion of the local community now? It's an interesting development.

"I never knew that the strap beards specifically avoided mustaches because they had had military connotations."

Yeah basically their whole thing was they were radical pacifists and all the German states and Low Countries kept trying to conscript them into their many and various and ceaseless wars at the time, so they were like, "Yo, US, if we move to you, can we be exempted from the draft?" and the US was like, "Yeah, dawg, that sounds like a First Amendment thing we can accommodate." (Actually it was historically more complicated but that's an important part.) But yeah, basically they object to looking like these assholes and it's a deliberate choice to mark themselves out from the mustachioed, proud, violent, vain, important military men of the time.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:21 PM on June 22, 2017 [21 favorites]


"Anyway, there's nothing particularly community-breaking about dining at a Mexican restaurant, so why not! Some groups prefer not to do any business with Englischer businesses if they can avoid it, especially for young people who might be easily dazzled by the local Wal-Mart"

I guess I should add, people sometimes confuse the simplicity of the Plain People with the anti-fun-ness of the Puritans, and that's not it at all! The Amish tell jokes (even dirty ones), enjoy good food, make beautiful objects for enjoyment (quilts, woodwork), go skateboarding as noted above -- they try to avoid personal pride and things that harm the community, not fun. They play a lot of board games, even cards as long as there's no gambling (Uno is popular!), and like a lot of outdoor recreation, like fishing and birdwatching. If you engage in those hobbies yourself, and live near Amish country, you may see them at local parks! They don't have the Puritan attitude that fun things necessarily distract the mind from God. Dining out, as a community, is fun! And can be community-building to all do that together.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:38 PM on June 22, 2017 [10 favorites]


A lot of this also depends on how "high" (liberal) or "low" (conservative) the group is. I've never heard of an Old Order Amish affiliation that would allow recreational plane travel, but when the Nickel Mines shooting occurred, the wounded girls were airlifted to hospitals.By and large, their parents did not go with them because of the air travel restriction.

The larger the community, the more liberal at least some members tend to be. I worked with Amish people in northern IN--many families in that community relied on jobs in RV factories, rather than subsistence farming, to live, so they had a lot more disposable income than is typical for an Amish household. Vacations, eating out, and buggies with all the options are popular. They have modern kitchens with gas appliances and modern bathrooms. By contrast, when I visited Berne, IN, two hours away, the primary occupation was farming and the standard of living was much plainer. Drinking water came from a pump rather than a faucet; there was no question that this was not an English home.
posted by epj at 4:55 PM on June 22, 2017


"A lot of this also depends on how "high" (liberal) or "low" (conservative) the group is. I've never heard of an Old Order Amish affiliation that would allow recreational plane travel"

Yeah, definitely. The answer to any question about whether the Amish allow something is, "Well, it depends (on the local community and its rules)." There are definitely Old Order Amish who don't travel long-distance at all, and keep in touch with distant relatives solely through letters. But it's not at all unusual to see Amish (of various strictness) taking advantage of public transport and accommodations throughout the Midwest. Some days you're just at a highway rest stop and there's a whole bunch of Amish there on the way somewhere, or you get on a train and there's an Amish lady with three kids going to visit a relative. (I've never actually seen an Old Order Amish person on an airplane but I can certainly imagine that some group might allow it in certain circumstances.)

I think most people who've never lived near Amish country have a mental picture of very strict Old Order Amish who are very old-fashioned about technology and very limited in their dress who solely subsistence farm, and they don't realize the range of ways of living that different Amish communities engage in, even before we start shading into Mennonites and ACs and other Anabaptists.

A fascinating little window is the Lehman's catalog, a hardware and mail order store that was started to serve the Amish community (and also tourists interested in Amish-y things) ... flipping through the home appliances section is just endlessly interesting. I think it's gotten more "rural tourism"-y in recent years, but it's still a pretty interesting compendium of the variety of ways one can live without electricity, from the very simple to the extremely elaborate. (Plus I always want all the kitchen tools.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:19 PM on June 22, 2017 [4 favorites]


I find English attitudes towards the Amish to be as or possibly more interesting than the Amish themselves. I used to live in a part of Maryland with a large Amish and Mennonite population and I worked on mom and pop retail so I had both a lot of Amish and Mennonite customers (celiac ran strong in the Amish families in the area and I worked at a health food store back before gluten free was really a thing--we did have hitching posts outside the store) and tourists. The tourists had some odd ideas about the Amish, and let me tell you, where the Amish could take advantage of that to make a buck? They totally did.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:27 PM on June 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


My Mom is an antique dealer, so a couple of years ago we hit up some auctions in Goshen and Shipshewana, and I guess one in Elkhart. It was an extraordinary experience. Every time I start thinking 'fucking Americans' over various and sundry, I run into something like Amish country. What a fantastic thing that such diversity is possible, even successful, in today's homogenized world.

Obviously, when visiting, when confronted with the difference, one can't help but have a thousand questions. Obviously you don't just start asking! I did have a really nice conversation about cycling in the city vs. cycling in the countryside with one old guy. But, well, so many questions.. So, thanks Eyebrows McGee, for the extended comments!

One thing I really didn't like there.. At the Shipshewana Trading Place Auction Restaurant, the servers would leave money on the table. Literally! Like the tip from the previous diner was left on your table. My Mom and I asked the server, "Is that yours?", really hoping the money would go away so we didn't have to think about it any longer. No such luck.. "Yes", was the only answer offered :) I guessed that it was like a busker keeping a little in their hat, maybe even a larger denomination, to encourage people. To lay the hint of what's expected, kind of thing. Still, I found it quite discomforting, and I'd like to understand better.
posted by Chuckles at 6:30 PM on June 22, 2017


I spent a lot of time in Lancaster County as a child and still re-read the Ellie's People books. For the past few years, I've had a growing interest in tziniut. We're Reform and we had shrimp tacos for dinner tonight, so we're so not frum, but plain dress really appeals to me at this point in my life. I've started to buy clothes from online shops that cater to the frum and LDS. I own a kapp, too. I've been covering my hair as an act of resistance this year. I like the aesthetics of the kapp, but it's very much a specific Anabaptist symbol, so it just sits in my bureau.
posted by Ruki at 7:11 PM on June 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


I used to teach at a community college in Oregon near a Mennonite community, and half the campus newspaper was staffed by Mennonite women. A few of them transferred to the nearby university, though I don't know where the line for that community was drawn in regard to higher education vs marriage and family and farming.
posted by catlet at 4:18 AM on June 23, 2017


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