Nobody Is Allowed to Dress Better Than You | How Hutterite Women Dress

Not money for clothes. Cloth. A measured length, handed to your family, and the family in the next house gets the same. Everything you will wear for the next year has to come out of it — your dresses, your blouses, your aprons, the kerchief on your head. When it is used up, it is used up. You will guess this is about modesty. It is not. The modesty rules here would fit on one line, and I give you that line in this video. I am the head cook on a colony of a hundred and fifty people in southern Alberta. Here I explain who buys the cloth and who divides it, what happens when a woman runs out in February, the only three rules there are about how a garment is made — which do not mention colour at all — and the one inequality this system cannot get rid of, no matter how carefully the cloth is measured. SOURCES · "Striving for the Divine Ornament: Change and Adaptation of Hutterite Women's Dress in North America" — that fabric is bought in bulk and divided among families "as laid down in time-proven rules", the stated reason being that no family use costlier material or more of it than its neighbour; the yardage allowance; wider modern cloth; and the three rules of construction · Hutterites.org — dress by Leut, the Tiechl, and the Mitz worn by girls · South Dakota News Watch — that women sew their own, that a bride sews her own dress and the groom's shirt, that a woman is given a sewing machine when she marries, and that some items are now ordered rather than made · Magdalena Perks, "Hutterite Clothing" — the bright colours, calicos, plaids and prints, and the annual purchase If you find an error, put it in the comments and I will pin the correction. I would rather be right than look right.