Amish Dress

The dress code for some groups includes prohibitions against buttons, allowing only hooks and eyes to keep clothing closed; other groups allow members to sew buttons onto clothing. In some groups, certain articles can have buttons and others cannot. (The reason for the restriction on buttons is their former association with the military.) The Amish are noted for the quality of their quilts and for their farming efficiency.

An Amish man will typically be clean-shaven as long as he is single. Upon getting married, he will grow a beard. In some communities, however, a man will grow a beard after he is baptized. Mustaches are generally not allowed because they are seen as symbols of the military, a custom with origins in the religious and political persecution in the 16th and 17th century European. Men of the nobility and upper classes, who often served as military officers, wore mustaches but not beards. The wearing of beards, however, is largely based on the same old testament prohibition against shaving that leads Hassidic Jews to not shave their beards.