EMBRACING BEAUTY THROUGH CLOTHING | KAIROS GLOBAL | NOVEMBER 2026

Author: Sonia Kurian

Audio

Intro: Our clothes can also reflect the beauty of God, writes Sonia Kurian, as she encourages us to dress beautifully.

Some of us think of clothing as an afterthought. I know this, because I grew up as exactly that person. I was a tomboy growing up and, in retrospect, probably a bit of a Goth, so I really disliked the puffy, scratchy, frilly dresses my mom made me wear as a child. I don’t think I had any idea how to style myself with clothes; I just knew I didn’t want to wear the dresses my mom often picked out for me. Of course, my parents also came shopping with me as a child, so even though they let me pick the clothes, they chose the sizes, which often ended up being 2-3 times larger than my true fit. Now, why they were okay with me wearing dresses that fit me, but thought I had to wear jeans and T-shirts that made me look like a broom swaddled in bedsheets, I couldn’t explain to you. Such are the blind spots we all have in life! Suffice it to say, I still chose my jeans and T-shirts over the dresses, and so often I walked around with baggy, potato sack-reminiscent clothing for most of my childhood and even into high school, when I moved to the US. 

It was when I went to college in India that I finally started to love clothing for the first time. I could get things tailored for me, and I’ve always had a soft spot for Indian embroidery and hand block prints. For the first time in my life, the world was my oyster in terms of what I could get made or choose to wear. I began to wear dresses for special occasions and found that dresses made from non-scratchy materials are actually pleasant to wear (who knew?). I still dressed quite modestly from a secular point of view – nothing too high above the knee, nothing sleeveless or bearing too much cleavage. This wasn’t necessarily hard for me, because I always thought of Indian actresses from the era of Madhubala as my style icons, and you never thought of them consciously as dressing modestly, just as dressing beautifully. This was always the goal for me in my own clothing as well. Our Muslim sisters set such a good example for us in this regard – they always seem to know how to look gorgeous and so stylish, even though they're covered neck to ankle. Doesn’t just seeing their effortless style make you want to get inside their minds and learn from them? (Hint: there’s more than one way to be the salt and make people thirst for more). 

I do think the freedom to dress myself as I wanted in college had a lot to do with me actually discovering what suited me best. These days, some might say I’ve let my love of clothing get the better of me, and I’d certainly hate for St John Chrysostom to see my closet. But I also take great joy in sharing my closet with my friends. I’ve loved and amassed a lot of beautiful things, but I’m always so glad when friends ask me to borrow things, because I’d hate to keep all of those beautiful things for just myself. Beautiful things are meant to be shared; that’s why we feel so joyful when we wear a pretty dress or a cool earring or bracelet. We get to share a little joy with the world through beauty, and not only does it put a pep in my step, but it can bring joy and delight into someone else’s day as well. 

Thinking back now, I think what helped me the most with discovering how to embrace beauty and to dress beautifully was women taking delight in helping me dress or do my makeup or hair, or taking a few extra seconds to teach me something I didn’t know before. I think of how much a woman’s delight in bringing out beauty in the world has nourished, dignified and beautified the entire world. I know men can dress well too (and what a joy it is to see a well-styled man out in the world!), but I’ve always noticed in women the inability to stop themselves from primping the corner of a room, or fluffing a pillow, or wanting to put a flower in a vase, just to make a corner look good. 

Some may ask, what is the point of dressing well? Isn’t it just a waste of money? Isn’t it enough to just cover your nakedness? Sure, we only really need to cover our nakedness. But even if you had just one dress or one pair of shirt and pants, wouldn’t you clean it, iron it, mend it, so that when you wore it, it looked good – dare I say, so you looked well put together and beautiful? I don’t think it’s a matter of getting the most expensive brands out there; in fact, often it seems beauty evades the popular brands. We all know that what makes something beautiful is not a predetermined band of price, brand, or maker. But you do know something is beautiful when you see it – be it in the mall or hanging in a street market stall. 

I see beauty as one of the many ways in which we radiate God’s beauty, joy and delight into the world. Clothing, flowers, art, and home decor are all the myriad ways in which we can co-create with God to bring the unending delight and joy He seems to have in making things beautiful. He too could have simply focused on making merely functional things – He didn’t have to make plants beautiful; they just needed to produce fruit. But this is not how He operates, and aren’t you so glad He doesn’t? 

I think He gives us a thousand opportunities a day to be creative and make something beautiful out of the clay in front of us. The same God who never tires of making gazillions of butterflies or snowflakes and making each one uniquely beautiful, has also given us so many rooms, so many days to clothe ourselves and so many ways in which to embrace the same love for beauty that He has. I hope we can each appreciate the ways in which we can honour and beautify our bodies with clothing, and reject the temptation to desecrate or dull the presence of something beautiful in our midst. Imagine decorating a chapel or the tabernacle in drab grey colour? We take such delight in beautifying the Lord’s altar; do you not think the Lord also delights to see His little ones honour the tabernacle of our bodies? Do you not think He takes as much joy in our little styling sessions as we do when our friends or loved ones try on their clothes for us?

For those of y’all who are convinced clothes will never look good on you, I invite you to just try. Look up someone online who has a similar body type as you and find someone from that group who dresses well or like you’d like to. Then, little by little, maybe do some clothing try-on montages at your local mall to see how things look on you, how you feel in them. This will help you see what looks good on you, and what makes you feel beautiful. Once you know that, you can thrift online or even go to your local Goodwill, if you don’t want to overspend, and pick up some things and start incorporating them into your day to day life. I think you’ll see, like I did, that when you wear things that feel like a second skin and make you smile when you catch your reflection in the mirror, you just carry yourself with more confidence, and people also become a lot more amenable around you

I hope each of us can learn how to add beauty into our corners of the world and I hope something so small, simple and mundane as our clothing can become the daily salt or bread by which we exercise our God given eye for beauty, ability to co-create and add joy to a world that needs it.

Sonia Kurian believes in life lived to the fullest, which often means being present and attentive to the small moments each day brings. She works in Houston, USA, as a Technical Program Manager in the healthcare sector. Her interests include collecting books as if her life depended on it, reading in awkward positions, iconography and animated karaoke sessions in her car. She strongly believes God has a sense of humour and sees her life as an adventure worth discovering with Him.