Thanks to the Royal Navy and woad farms, we long ago fell in love with the fashion set by the Senior Service – navy blue. Officers and ratings came to have their varying versions of the colour, with ratings wearing bell-bottoms and stripes on their collars reminding them of the three famous victories of Nelson. The army had its red jacket and its thin red line and it was inevitable perhaps that the RAF had its own colour sky blue.
There were stylistic touches to the basic colouring of uniforms. The seven regiments of the Household Division made much of the arrangement of buttons on ceremonial dress. The Blues and Royals had helmets and plumes.
Fashion is essentially about change. Military fashion is unusual in making few changes as the years pass. Tradition rules. Bearskins and busbies, not to mention breastplates and helmets, are cherished., as are animal mascots. Red, white (summer style for the navy) and blue are accepted as part and parcel of the armed forces in their ceremonial role. Similar choices have been made by police forces and railway staff. (It is necessary for everybody to know who is a policeman and who is a railway guard. Hence there is a rational basis.) Coming from a religious background, nurses adopted a familiar outfit, though less formal than the sweeping habits of Sisters of Mercy.
Unsurprisingly, uniforms and colour set their impress on the officers of the Church. Monks had their cowl and girdle. Rectors and vicars had a mix of academic robes and copes etc with bishops opting for rochets and chimeres (something akin to tabards). The Oxford Movement marked their respect for church history with the introduction of fashions from the medieval and feudal era, including highly noticeable mitres. (In some armies grenadiers wore mitres.)
The overtones are not to everybody’s taste in the 21st century. Many members of the clergy now repudiate robes and prefer to conduct services in subfusc – or even jeans and trainers. I remember long ago coming across an item in ‘Punch’ on the changing styles of clerical footwear. I remember interviewing a diocesan bishop who had purple slippers -- but footwear has not figured prominently on the church fashion scene, though like the Brigade of Guards some members of the clergy have paid attention to the number and arrangement of buttons on cassocks and soutanes. As with military tailoring, there is little innovation. Masculine fashion has stalled. Ordained women are showing some imaginative touches. Perhaps the future of church fashion lies with them.
ONE OF THE GREATEST
It was at Waltham Abbey that King Harold prayed before the battle of Hastings. It was to Waltham Abbey that his mangled body was brought, so they say, after William’s victory. The abbey church was at the top of its reputation until the Dissolution. It suffered collapses and retrenchment. The magnificent Norman nave remains. It all began in the seventh century with a small wooden church for the Anglo-Saxon locals. Those who think that England has never been the same since the Norman take-over find Waltham Abbey a key factor in the story.
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