(LifeSiteNews) — I loved Anna Kalinowska’s Clothed with Beauty: A Catholic Philosophy of Dress – but I wasn’t sure I was going to.
The marketing fail: a Facebook advertisement showing the book’s illustration of “shape harmony” in women’s wear. On the left, illustrating “lack of shape harmony,” a pink golf shirt modestly pulled out over the waist of a bulky blue skirt. On the right, illustrating “clothing in harmony with the human figure,” a pale mauve fitted dress with three-quarter-length sleeves, a Peter Pan collar, and a softly pleated skirt falling from an unadorned, clearly demarcated waist. Whichever human figure that mauve dress was created for, it wasn’t mine.
However, the promise that this book was going to explain how there is more to Catholic women’s dress than modesty hooked me in. And this is not surprising, for “The Catholic Women’s Clothing Debate” has been raging on the internet since there was an internet, and to judge by the many stories about Padre Pio’s views on trousers, long before.
I was not disappointed: as a Catholic who attends the Traditional Latin Mass, Kalinowska is clearly tuned into the conversation and brings to it intelligence, an artist’s eye, and devotion to goodness, truth, and beauty. She hopes that her readers will “imitate, in each act of dress, their heavenly Creator Who creates nothing that is not beautiful.”
As Kalinowska recounts, it was the discovery of the Traditional Latin Mass – and the inevitable comparison to the “mangled remains” of the current liturgy – that made her realize that today’s grubby fashions, such a contrast to those of the past, were not simply part of an historical evolution. Like Annibale Bugnini’s revolution, post-1962 fashion represents “a rupture.” Looking into the question, the authoress discovered that “just as there were objective principles that guided true liturgical development, there were objective principles that guided the art of dress.” Her hope is that her book is “a small contribution to the work of restoration.”
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The work, which is beautifully illustrated, weighs up the current debate between advocates of “modesty-at-all-costs” and of “normalcy-to-win-souls” and proposes a third way: finding and wearing clothing that is both modest and aesthetically pleasing. Using the philosophy of Dietrich von Hildebrand and the art principles of the once-famous Goldstein sisters in their Art in Everyday Life (1930), Kalinowska teaches a short course on harmony, proportion, balance, rhythm, and emphasis. She also investigates the difference between mere elegance and objective beauty in dress: her conclusions may surprise you.
Kalinowska also draws inspiration from “the valiant woman” described in the Book of Proverbs and the traditional habit of nuns – without advocating that laywomen wear them. (Don’t laugh: a young man once asked me after Mass why we women don’t dress like Our Lady. I replied that Our Lady lived in an entirely different climate.) There is also a chapter devoted specifically to men’s dress.
This is very much a book for women in conservative or traditional Catholic communities. (In fact, I think we of the long-skirted set should all have it on our shelves and talk about it after Mass.) It is the first book about fashion that I have ever read that includes a photo of a woman in a chapel veil – and to show what she’s doing wrong, to boot. The poor girl turns up on page 26 wearing that golf-shirt and bulky skirt combo, and I felt seen. (Happily, the model is then given an outfit more in keeping with her mantilla.)
Clothed with Beauty is also for any woman who would prefer to wear Dior’s “New Look” – if not her great-great-grandmothers’ folk costume – than the ugly fast fashion cluttering up every main street from Anchorage to Arkhangelsk. Happily, the book also gives practical advice for finding better clothes.
Recognizing the difficulties of finding elegant (let alone beautiful) clothing today, Kalinowska recommends beginning with one outfit: what we wear to church. And, thus, my fellow TLM adherents were soon treated to the sight of Mrs. McLean in a straight skirt with her blouse tucked in and, in place of bulky boots, fuchsia pumps. I was also inspired by Clothed with Beauty to revisit the National Gallery of Scotland. There I examined the clothing in all the portraits, from the aprons of dancing peasants to the velvet overdress of Napoleon’s mother, and I concluded that Kalinowska is right. Something atrocious has happened to the clothing of humanity, and it is time we took beauty back.
Anna Kalinowska’s Clothed with Beauty: A Catholic Philosophy of Dress (2026, 145 pages) is available for purchase from Os Justi Press.
