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AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Hallelujah, it's Easter Sunday. And Hollis Booker, like many churchgoers, has been planning a special outfit for today.
HOLLIS BOOKER: I would wear my best suit. I would have my shoes shine. My son - he would definitely have a sports jacket on and be dressed different than any other time.
RASCOE: The retired minister remembers always trying to dress to impress on Easter Sunday. Booker lives in Aurora, Colorado, but comes from a family of sharecroppers in rural Tennessee.
BOOKER: As sharecroppers, we didn't have a lot of means, but what we did have, we made sure that clothes that we were going to wear were pressed and clean and shoes well shined and ready. It's a matter of presenting yourself before God, as we saw it, and letting the Lord know that we are looking for something better in the year to come. And that tradition, it was carried over from slavery. Sundays was the only day that slaves were given off. And that day was a special day because they would worship. And then at that point, still, they would be clean, make sure their clothes were clean, especially on Easter.
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TAYLOR CRUMPTON: Dressing oneself in adornment and glory and praise to God is honoring the divinity in you and the body that God made.
RASCOE: Taylor Crumpton is a writer and journalist who writes about music and culture. The 29-year-old lives in Chicago but grew up in Dallas, Texas, where Resurrection Week culminated in what she calls the Olympics of Church fashion.
CRUMPTON: Easter Sunday is the Sunday that many church congregations look forward to, and for Black women and girls, this is their time to shine. The first thing that comes to mind and the first thing that will capture the eye is a hat - a purple hat, a green hat, the more color, the better. The girls will be in their babydoll dresses in a shade that complements the mother's outfit with a matching headband, with a shining shoe, and you can't forget it is a full family affair. Everybody is coordinated (ph) to the nines. Every accessory has to be new and matching.
RASCOE: The hats - if you could talk a little bit more about the hats because it's really those church mothers. And these hats - they're crowns, really.
CRUMPTON: A crown is a fitting term. It really ties to a historical tradition of, you know, adornment of the head from the great migration and also from the Harlem Renaissance. When we see these church mothers and their hats, they're colorful. They're dressed in silks and sparkling with rhinestones and flower garlands, feathers, lace, all of this adornment to catch God's eye.
RASCOE: Did fashion play a role in the church that you grew up in?
CRUMPTON: I grew up going to Corinth Missionary Baptist Church, which is my father's church, which is his mother's church. And my granny - whenever I would spend summers with my grandmother and we would go to vacation Bible school, I would put on her gold, bedazzled bracelets because she wasn't able to. I would make sure that she had her gold cross, that her hat looked nice, that her wig was laid. And I just remember seeing my grandmother, still at the age of over 90, trust me enough to help her prepare for the ritual that is church dress and church fashion. You know, the late American fashion designer Patrick Kelly said that in one pew at Sunday church in Vicksburg, Mississippi, there's more fashion to be seen than on a Paris runway. There has always been a relationship between fashion, the Black church and where we are today.
RASCOE: Well, yeah, and I wanted to ask you about that because, you know, reports show, you know, fewer young people are attending church these days. How can a tradition like this - you know, getting super dressed up on Easter and that particular Black Easter fashion - how can that live on?
CRUMPTON: Well, we've always adorned ourselves. In many West African rituals, there are elaborate adorned headdresses. In Sunday rituals in the Caribbean, there has always been a understanding of Sunday being a days of putting on your best. So regardless of whether young people are going to church, intrinsically embedded within us, there is a universal cultural sentiment that even if I'm not in the church house, I can give glory to the creator for the spring season, and 9 times out of 10, we do it with our clothing.
RASCOE: That's Taylor Crumpton. She is a writer and journalist. She lives in Chicago. Thank you so much for joining us.
CRUMPTON: Thank you so much for having me.
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