Dressing appropriately - St John Baptiste de La Salle

If you wish to be dressed appropriately, follow the customs of the country, and dress more or less like people of your rank and age. Still, it is important to take care that your clothes have nothing luxurious or anything superfluous about them. You must avoid whatever suggests ostentation or worldliness.

The best way to judge the appropriateness of clothing is by custom; follow it without fail. Because the human spirit is prone to change and the things that pleased us yesterday no longer do so today, there have been invented, and are still being invented every day, all sorts of different ways of dressing to satisfy this changing spirit. Those who would want to dress as people did 30 years ago would make themselves look ridiculous and eccentric. It is, however, characteristic of the conduct of people of good judgment never to attract attention to themselves in any way.

Fashion is what people call the style in which clothes are made at a given time.You ought to follow it in the matter of your hats, linen, and outer garments. It would be against decorum for you to wear a tall hat or one with a wide brim when everyone else uses low-cut hats with narrow brims. Nevertheless, it is not always advisable to adopt all the newest fashions right away. Some of them are capricious and bizarre, while some are reasonable and conformable to decorum. Just as you ought not to go against the latter, neither must you adopt too hastily the former, which ordinarily are followed only by a few people and do not last very long.

The surest and most reasonable rule concerning fashion is do not invent your own, do not be the first to try it, and do not wait until everyone else has given it up before abandoning it.

 Rules of Christian Decorum and Civility