Do the Amish Make Their Own Clothes? Yes, From Cloth They Buy

Yes, for the most part. Amish women sew most of their family’s clothes at home, but they buy the fabric, which is mostly polyester and polyester-cotton blends. Hats and suspenders come from stores, and some families buy shirts, trousers or dresses as well.

Where do the Amish get their clothes?

Most Amish women buy their fabric in local stores, often run by a woman from their own church community. Few mills weave cloth for so small a market, so these stores buy much of their dress fabric from brokers who sell off what the garment industry has left over. Stores serving Plain customers, such as Good’s Store in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, also sell ready-made hats, suspenders, broadfall trousers and long-sleeved dress shirts, and some Plain women buy dresses rather than sew them.

Fabric is chosen for easy care. Dresses are mostly polyester because it cleans easily, dries quickly on the line and needs little ironing. Men’s everyday trousers are commonly made of a durable denim blend high in polyester and nylon, and shirts of polyester-cotton. All-cotton cloth is avoided for everyday wear because it fades and wrinkles.

Who sews Amish clothes?

Women do. Many make their own dresses, and many mothers make their daughters’ dresses and their husbands’ and sons’ trousers. The rules on sewing machines differ from one affiliation to another: women in one group may use only foot-powered treadle machines, while those in another may run their machines on batteries.

How do the Amish dress?

Every Amish group prescribes clothing for its members, and the details differ from one affiliation to another, down to the width of a hat brim or the size of a woman’s cap. Colors are solid and mostly dark, such as purple, blue, wine, brown, gray and black, with lighter shades for children and summer clothes in some groups.

Men wear plain suits whose coats have no collars, lapels or pockets, trousers held up with suspenders, and broad-brimmed hats, felt in winter and straw in summer. Belts and neckties are not worn. Married men grow a beard but shave the mustache.

Women wear long dresses in solid colors, usually in three pieces: the dress, a cape over the bodice and an apron. Sunday dresses are often black with a white apron. Women do not cut their hair; they wear it in a bun under a white cap called a covering, with black stockings and shoes, and no jewelry. Amish dresses are solid-colored, while many conservative Mennonite women wear printed fabrics.

Do the Amish use zippers?

Generally not on their traditional clothes. Amish men’s trousers are usually broadfalls, made with a front flap closed by buttons so that no zipper is needed. Coats and vests fasten with hooks and eyes, a custom so closely tied to the Amish that they have been called the “Hook and Eye People.” Buttons are used on shirts. Women’s dresses are closed with straight pins or snaps.

No passage of Scripture is cited for hooks and eyes. The Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia suggests that the Amish simply kept the fastener in use before buttons became common. Buttons were at first costly and often ornamental, so adopting them would have looked like a departure from simplicity.

Why do the Amish dress the way they do?

Amish dress is a sign of humility and of separation from the world. The Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College puts it this way: “dress among the Amish signals submission to the collective order and serves as a public symbol of group identity.” Jewelry, like cosmetics, is forbidden to guard against pride.

The New Testament sets no uniform, but it warns against outward adornment. Paul asks that women dress “in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array” (1 Timothy 2:9), and Peter writes, “Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel” (1 Peter 3:3). The women’s covering follows Paul’s teaching on head coverings in 1 Corinthians 11. Amish and conservative Mennonite women wear dresses rather than trousers because both groups regard trousers as men’s clothing.

Related reading

• How do Amish and Mennonite clothing choices reflect their faith?
• Why do Amish have beards?
• How to tell if an Amish or Mennonite woman is married