We attended the wedding of one of my husband’s college roommates on Saturday. It was a storybook wedding, so we all had to come in costume. It was quite a production!
Aren’t the monks adorable? There must have been at least 6 monks at the wedding and my husband was one of them (though he’s not in the photo above). When my daughter saw his costume she said that men don’t wear dresses, but I think that that’s part of the appeal of the monk’s robe as a costume. It provides men an ease-of-dress-wearing experience and I think they like to imagine that we enjoy wondering what (if anything) they are wearing underneath! Plus, most men look great in a monk’s robe at just about any age and size and they can accessorize with beads, crosses, ropes, etc. as they wish which is fun.
I used Simplicity pattern 4213 to make my husband’s tunic, and somehow I figured out how to add a hood to it. It’s not a collared hood, so it has more of what I think of as a Franciscan look, though I know some Franciscan robes also have collars. I’ve always been fascinated by nuns and monks and their clothing. If you’d like to see what St. Francis supposedly actually wore, click here. And look at the finely crafted miniature nuns and their habits I just found here – fantastic!
