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In this paper, I posit that the transformation of monastic habits is observed and maintained in East Asian school uniforms. School uniforms at the schools founded by religious orders, mainly by Protestant and Catholic missionaries, could have manifested faith and religious identity. These religious authorities, who acted as managers of civic education, coincided with other public and private schools founded in secular contexts, unlike the religious emblems of those groups in their home countries. Many schools founded by Christian missionaries in East Asia in the early twentieth century eliminated a "sacred versus profane" dichotomy in their school uniforms and school symbols. In the formulation of a nation state in East Asia, homogeneity among inhabitants was more important than a faith-based religious identity by each Christian missionary group. Wearers of school uniforms in East Asia were taught to nurture civic identity along with the faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In medieval Christendom, liturgical vestments were not just attributes for priestly identity. In direct contact with the celebrant's body, they were charged with numerous allegorical significations that this article is aimed at studying. The first one associated the priest's clothing with a moral "rite of passage." Each vestment symbolized a virtue, thanks to which the priest was supposed to get ready for the Mass. A new allegorical system emerged in the thirteenth century: as symbols of arma Christi , the vestments invited the priest to follow Christ in his Passion. These liturgical garments were even considered as metaphors for Christ's flesh. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, the celebrant's clothing was a kind of new embodiment. By putting the liturgical vestments on, the priest was able to transform into the ultimate priest with a new emphasis on his quasi-demiurgic power; as such the priest became one of the most sacred components of the ritual of the Eucharist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of a new progressivism ushered into existence in the Roman Catholic Church by the Vatican II Council initiated by Pope John XXIII in 1962 and concluded by Pope Paul VI in 1965, this essay examines nuns' resistance to and eventual adoption of new professional garb as a site of sometimes contentious debates about the changing roles of women ecclesiastics. Within the context of passionate and, at times, violent fights for civil and women's rights and of protests against U.S. involvement in Vietnam, two popular films from this decade— The Trouble with Angels (1966) and its sequel, Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows (1968)—stage a competition between tradition and innovation in both theological and sartorial arenas. Ultimately, the nuns in these films follow a calling to become public advocates for a more humane and charitable world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore the origins of the circumcision dress worn by Jewish male infants during their brit millah (ritual circumcision). With no requirements according to Jewish law on what is to be worn during this ceremony, how does early textual evidence point to our understanding and use of the dress? An examination of visual representations of circumcision ceremonies during the Early Modern period in manuscript and print culture points to the adaptation and use of a jacket worn by the infant during this time. This is then paired with extant examples of the period in museum collections. Lastly, as Jews began to assimilate and adapt practices of their host cultures in the nineteenth century, we see the rise of the practice of a dress worn by the infant, with an examination of infant costume and materials of the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1990s there was a growing and renewed interest on the practice of clothing images of saints after, as Richard Trexler put it, the negligence demonstrated towards it by art historians until then. In 2018, following the publication of new and unprejudiced studies about it, the presence of two dresses belonging to statues of the Virgin Mary in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination" testified to the impact clothed images had on fashion creators and, according to David Morgan, the Church's ritual and performative life. While focusing on the miraculous image of Nossa Senhora da Lapa from Quintela, Portugal, this article aims to acknowledge the many roles played by its clothes and jewels, assessing the complexity of this phenomenon and aiming for a wider understanding of how the faithful engaged with devotional sculpture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]