Dressing for Relationality
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Normcore, Benedictine Simplicity, and the Metamodern Spirit


by Jay McDaniel, PhD
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"The prioritization of the emotional desire to connect with potentially anybody over the intellectual agenda of defining cultural categories through fashion choices is a metamodernist motivation."

 - ​Linda Ceriello and Greg Dember, "Normcore" in What is Metamodernism? 

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Linda Ceriello and Greg Dember describe a fashion trend of the past decade known as normcore. Wikipedia describes it as a unisex style characterized by “unpretentious, average-looking clothing such as jeans, T-shirts, sweatshirts, button-down shirts, and sneakers." Normcore wearers "do not try to distinguish themselves from others through their clothing. This does not mean that they simply wear whatever is easiest. They consciously choose clothing that is functional, ordinary, and undistinguished."

Ceriello and Dember amplify this description and associate it with what they call a "metamodern" sensibility. In their words, normcare is:
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​... a deliberate effort by people who have a non-mainstream/creative/artistic identity to adopt the fashion sensibilities and general demeanor of “normal” people. It is quietly, radically metamodern in that it emphasizes relationality – the ability to connect to one’s own and other people’s inner experience – over externally focused preoccupations with cultural groups and with categorical identities that seek to differentiate one from others.

Ceriello and Dember, What is Metamodern, Normcore

​They see in normcore two qualities important to a metamodern sensibility: (1) relationality and (2) a self-aware transcendence of the desire to be “authentic” by differentiating oneself from others.

Ironesty

The phrase self-aware transcendence is important. As a fashion choice, normcore is not innocent of postmodern irony. Instead it examplifies what Ceriello and Dember call ironesty (a term coined by Dember). Its practitioners know that they are making a fashion choice by appearing not to make one. The gesture has an ironic side. But its irony is directed toward a sincere end: being with others rather than standing apart from them. As Ceriello and Dember suggest, this desire to be with others is itself a form of relationality.

Admittedly, normcore can take an elitist turn. Consider the CEO who wears jeans and a T-shirt to work, thereby demonstrating how relaxed and unconventional he is, while expecting his employees to follow a more restrictive dress code. He stands out by appearing not to stand out. His studied normality becomes another declaration of privilege: I am powerful enough not to dress like a powerful person.

The Benedictines

But normcore can also be embodied in a humbler and more genuine way. I see something of its spirit in a religious order with which I am associated: the Benedictines. I am an oblate (a lay associate) at a Benedictine monastery in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Benedictine sisters take a vow of simplicity as part of their commitment to walking with Christ. The sisters devote themselves to community life, social service, daily prayer, and what they call “holy play.” They like to have fun.

Any image of sheer sameness is eliminated as soon as you get to know them, They are strong women with distinctive personalities, interests, abilities, and senses of humor. Yet they consciously resist the cult of self-differentiation through clothing. If they are to distinguish themselves, they hope it will be through compassion rather than fashion.

Some of the sisters—mostly the older ones—wear habits. A habit is not normcore in the strict sense, since it can make its wearer visibly distinctive. Nevertheless, it carries something of the normcore impulse: the relinquishment of fashion as a means of continual self-presentation. Most of the sisters wear simple, practical clothing, sometimes purchased at thrift stores. Their aim is not to disappear but to become more available—to God, to one another, and to the people they serve. They want to be with others in loving ways.

Beyond Being Cool

A severe cynic might say that the sisters do not stand out precisely in order to stand out. There may be a small truth in this. No voluntary act of simplicity is entirely free from self-awareness. But there is a moral difference between standing out through conspicuous consumption and standing out through compassion. The sisters do not want to be envied because of their wealth, prestige, beauty, or power—qualities that fashion is often used to signify. They do not aspire to be cool.

Their commitment to something more than themselves—the love of Christ—is the source of their freedom from the need to be cool. They need not turn themselves into spectacles because their lives are centered on a love that exceeds the self.

The sisters also recognize that many people in the world—perhaps most—do not have the money, leisure, or social freedom to “dress for success.” They make do with what is available. Their clothing is not a carefully constructed aesthetic statement. It is what they can afford, what they can find, or what their circumstances permit. Benedictine simplicity identifies especially with these people: the make-doers.

Fashion and Privilege

This is an important qualification. For a relatively affluent person, simplicity can be a chosen style. For someone living in poverty, it may be an unavoidable condition. The two should not be romanticized as if they were identical. The Benedictine vow has moral meaning only when it produces solidarity with those who have fewer choices—not when it turns their circumstances into an aesthetic for the privileged.

Benedictine simplicity, including simplicity in dress, thus offers a prophetic challenge to the darker side of the fashion industry, which continually encourages people to stand out, establish status, and make a statement. The question is not whether clothing makes a statement. Even the refusal to make a statement can become one. The deeper question is: What statement is worth making?

The Statement worth Making

The Benedictines answer that relational love is the statement most worth making—with one’s clothing, perhaps, but still more with one’s life. In this respect, they embody the spirit of open and relational theology, with its conviction that the heart of the universe is love rather than hierarchy: being with rather than being over, relational power rather than coercive power.

In Say Hello to Metamodernism!, Greg Dember presents normcore as one of eleven methods through which the metamodern spirit can be expressed. The others include oscillation, quirkiness, performatism, and various forms of reflexivity through which sincerity becomes possible without the complete abandonment of irony. For Dember, these methods help protect the reality of felt experience against both modern reductionism and postmodern ironic detachment. Dember describes the eleven methods here.

Normcore may now have passed as a recognizable fashion trend. But its relational possibility remains. At its best, it asks whether clothing can help us relinquish the anxious project of turning ourselves into objects for admiration. It suggests that we might dress not to rise above others, but to stand alongside them.

As I see things, the prophetic meaning of normcore, then, is not that everyone should wear jeans and T-shirts. It not that it is always wrong to dress beautifully, creatively, or distinctively. That kind of absolutism would be as destructive as sheer relativism.

The key is context. In some circumstances, for some people, standing out through fashion can be joyful and life-giving. It can express cultural identity, resist invisibility, celebrate an occasion, or offer beauty and playfulness to others. For people whose identities have been suppressed or marginalized, standing out may even be an act of liberation: a way of saying, I am here, and my presence matters. Fashion can also be playful—a form of art offered for the enjoyment of others. Relationality does not require sameness.
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The deeper question is why we want to stand out. Is our clothing a way of establishing superiority and inviting envy, or is it an expression of creativity offered to the world? Distinctiveness can become a gift rather than a claim to higher status. We need not become brands, but neither must we erase ourselves. We can dress distinctively or simply, as circumstances invite, while making room for companionship, service, play, and love.