A BROOD OF VANITY: FASHION - OBSESSION AND MINIMALISM | KAIROS GLOBAL | NOVEMBER 2026

Author: Br Gem George

Audio

Intro: Br Gem George cautions us against vanity in our dressing and style choices.

We live in an age ruled by trends and fads. Youngsters often follow the allure of whatever is in vogue. Blessed Fulton Sheen’s caveat to the Church of his time, that marrying the present age and its spirit leads to widowhood in the next (Old Errors and New Labels), is just as relevant today. 

Looking around, two trends are noticeable, though they appear contrary, completely paradoxical for the loyalty of the youth today: fashion-obsession and minimalism. It takes wisdom, discernment and clarity of mind to realise that both trends come from the same ‘bad tree’: vanity.

A healthy interest in fashion is salutary as long as it is ordered towards truth, beauty and goodness. It is commendable when someone dresses up honourably, with great care, fully conscious of their unrepeatable identity and human dignity. This becomes a visible expression of the invisible reality of the human soul’s beauty. If the body manifests the soul, what we wear definitely aids this manifestation. But beware, there are vices lurking right at the threshold of your passion for fashion to subdue and enslave you.

When fashion stops serving human dignity and starts confusing us about our true identity, vices begin to enter our lives through it. Fashion-obsession then leads to myriad spiritual illnesses. Vanity, avarice and extravagant expenditure, envy, comparison with others, and immodesty are a few among them.

Interestingly, St Thomas Aquinas, whose writings the Church holds up as the universal standard for theology, deals with the morality of outward apparel in his magnum opus, Summa Theologiae. (ST.II-II.q169.a1). The Angelic Doctor begins by pointing to the principle that vice is not in the outward things man uses, but in their immoderate use. According to him, one’s interest in fashion becomes disordered in three ways: when a man seeks glory through excessive attention to dress, when he seeks excessive comfort and sensuous pleasure in dressing, and when he is excessively concerned about attracting the attention of others through his clothing.

Aquinas’ genius needs applause here, for he treats the moral problem of minimalism centuries before the very notion itself became popular. He prophetically points a finger at modern-day minimalists when he rightly diagnoses vainglory behind one’s parade of simplicity or minimal living. One’s simplicity and frugality should not become an end in itself or a means to garner attention and appreciation. For him, not only extravagance but also the intentional embracing of deficiency or frugality in outward things could be an outlet of vanity. 

Although luxury is the best companion of vanity, it is not reluctant to relish its comradeship with simplicity and austerity. Vanity can even appropriate poverty, simplicity or austerity as a means of self-display and ostentation, as in the case of minimalists. The simplicity and austerity practised by a monk and a minimalist may be the same on the outside. But in essence, the former practises it to seek God with greater freedom, whereas the latter does so for one’s own comfort, aesthetic satisfaction, appreciation and the like.

Therefore, the two fads, chasing the latest fashion obsessively and curating the minimalist lifestyle, essentially emerge from the same act of vanity: building a false identity to impress others. The former does it by obsessing over adornment, whereas the latter does so by obsessing over its absence. But the sad reality is that both are relentlessly preoccupied with what others think, as if they had a ‘monkey on their back’, continually pestered by their own self-image. How deplorable it is when much energy, effort and money are spent only to inflate the false and vain notion of self! Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher; all is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 12:8).

Br Gem Jacob George, OP, is a simply professed Dominican Friar belonging to the Province of India. He is currently studying philosophy, residing at St Thomas Aquinas Priory, Orlim, Goa.