From Protestant Peasant Dress to Gay Pride T-Shirt: Transformations in Sartorial Strategy Amongst the <i>körtti</i> Movement in Finland

• Main Author: Anna-Mari Almila
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-05-01
• Series: Religions
• Subjects: Protestant revivalism; Pietism; Finland; religious dress; dress strategy; symbolic boundaries; equal marriage
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/10/6/351

This paper looks into the 200-year history of a particular Christian dress form in Finland, namely the <i>k&#246;rtti</i> dress. Emerging from a declining peasant dress style, this supposedly unchanging and fossilised signifier of a revivalist Protestant movement has in fact gone through numerous transformations influenced by both socio-political and religious trends as well as fashion-driven and materially-ordained factors. From the analysis emerge four key factors that influence how dress strategies are formulated and enacted within a religious movement: (1) how vulnerable or institutionalised the movement is; (2) how it is viewed by those external to it; (3) how the members of the movement want themselves to preserve or change the movement and its public image; (4) and how external fashion processes infiltrate the tastes and sensibilities of the members. It is concluded that elements considered &#8216;traditional&#8217;, &#8216;modern&#8217;, &#8216;secular&#8217; and &#8216;religious&#8217; may all be present at the same time in a dress phenomenon, indicating that fashion&#8217;s association with modern secularity is not as clear-cut as is sometimes thought.