Getting Dressed: Catherine Llewelyn-evans
Rev Catherine Llewelyn-evans shines in cassocks and dog collars
What should a woman priest wear?
The first Anglican women priests were ordained in Britain in 1994. There were just 32 of them then; there are now 1,380 in the Anglican communion around the world.
They often choose traditional cassocks for services. But there are no strict rules for their civvies.
A woman priest is caught in a bit of a bind: she can’t dress too sexily, flamboyantly, expensively, cheaply or drably. No wonder the Reverend Catherine Llewelyn-evans has found herself thinking that perhaps the original sin of Adam and Eve was just getting dressed. ‘Once you have to put on clothes, you differentiate yourself – and, in my case anyway, you go through years of selfconsciousness. Had we all remained naked, none of this would have happened.’
Catherine, as she likes parishioners to call her, did find her own successful style, but only after much trial and error.
Ordained at 45 (she is now 66), Catherine has served as a curate and vicar. Now retired, she is an unpaid supply priest, serving villages around her home in the cathedral city of Wells.
The Church was in her DNA. There were missionaries and churchmen in her father’s family, and her parents held open house for clergy and lost souls.
‘Perhaps the two are the same,’ she muses.
Her father, though a layman, served as administrator at Ripon Cathedral and wrote its definitive guide. She revelled in the out-of-hours access to the wonderful building – the darkness and the silence. But the job was badly paid and they lived frugally. ‘My father believed pennilessness was next to godliness.’ After Durham University, she became a teacher, married a solicitor and had three boys. Only when they were older did she contemplate a new career. She thought of counselling or physiotherapy because she never expected to be accepted for ordination. ‘I had assumed you had to be male, public school, stiff upper lip and all the rest.’ After ordination, there came the question of what a priest wears. Her mother had made all her clothes for her as a child. ‘Wanting to retain my sweet innocence, she dressed me like a cross between Anne of Green Gables and Looby Loo. I probably wanted that too, as I saw myself as Beth in Little Women – though later I realised there was more of Jo in me. ‘The only time I remember being bought clothes was when my mother appeared with that amazing new type of garment – SLACKS. I loathed them and have loathed trousers ever since – which is annoying as they are so practical.’ Catherine says she was never any good at clothes. During a miners’ strike, when girls at her school were told they could wear mufti, she was the only one who choose to remain in uniform. ‘Everyone thought it was because I was head girl. Only I knew that it was because I didn’t really know how to dress like a normal girl.’ At university, someone on her course told her she was
the worst-dressed girl he knew.
‘He was probably right, I dressed like a very drab Amish.’
As a priest, with few guidelines from authorities, she began experimenting. How did she escape from the traditional clergy shirt, which was black and stiff and very uncomfortable? She found the shirtless dog collar. ‘But you needed an implant of Velcro on the back of your neck to keep it in place. When I wore it, the postman said, “Excuse me, miss – are you a vicar or just a weird dresser?” “Both” was the answer.’
Eventually she found the softer quasi-t-shirt with integrated dog collar that she wears now, teamed with long skirts (bought at charity shops and on ebay) and discreet jewellery. She has never had trouble keeping slim. A ‘genius’ hairdresser, Jess at Bijou in Wells, keeps her bobbed hair trim.
She teams her cassocks with lowheeled shoes in liturgical colours: gold, green, red – and pink for the days she wears purple cassocks.
For church services, she wears a simple, slightly shaped cassock in white or black. The very first one was made for her ordination by a dressdesigner friend.
At first, she was nervous to wear it outside the church but now, in the traditional villages she serves, she likes to. ‘It makes it easy to identify me – plus I don’t have to worry about what I’m going to wear.’