The Goldenrod Dress

I’ve seen many different kinds of Amish and Mennonite people at Walmart on Saturdays, wearing different types and colors of plain clothes.  But I had never seen a woman’s dress quite the color of the one I saw one Saturday in autumn, a year ago.  I haven’t seen anything like it since, but I suspect I will remember it for a long time. 

It was a young Amish woman in a plain dress that caught my eye.  Her outfit was properly plain and simple, long from the neck to the ankles, close-tied at the top, cinched at the waist with a plain white string, pleated correctly, where it fell to the tops of her feet, and gathered over the rounds of her shoulders.  It was short sleeved, straight-hemmed, and as plain as it could be, just as any proper Amish lady’s dress should be.  It was covered over in front with a white day apron, and it was worn by a young woman of maybe twenty years, who had flat beach thongs on her feet. 

With a group of seven other Amish girls of roughly the same age, she walked out of the store laughing.  Except for her dress, they would have all looked the same, and that is the point in Amish country.  One wants to look the same, dress the same, and act the same, so as to not be different or unique.  Because to assert yourself as different would be prideful, perhaps even arrogant, and that would be an especially non-Amish thing to do – unless you are not yet a member of the church, and you still have a little time before courtship leads to marriage, and church membership, when conformity is expected of everyone. 

And what was the unusual thing about her dress?  It was just the color - a bright, eye-popping goldenrod.  It was the glory of full autumn blaze - yellow tingeing toward gold, and it was as unique and individual as anything I’ve ever seen in an Amish dress.  I suspect I could travel Holmes County for another ten years and never again see anything like it. 

We always think of Amish people as being uniformly plain and simple.  As being spiritually minded and not worldly.  But a handsome Amish woman of marriageable age?  That is a beautiful sight indeed, and the color of a simple dress tells us everything we need to know about the woman.