It may have something to do with the looming recession, but Quaker simplicity looks set for a revival. Stylists have often turned to religious groups – think of the Shaker influence in furniture – for a 'new look' and it seems our time for one of these makeovers has arrived. Famous couturiers are promising to introduce plain motifs for their autumn and winter collections this year, drawn from past Quaker garb. There will be plain grey, high collars, wide hats and the mannequins will have scrubbed faces and clean side-partings when they parade their exotic apparel on catwalks.

Eye has had a glimpse of this from the fashion pages of Intelligent Life magazine, which is in the Economist stable. We read that Prada, Roberto Cavalli and Giambattista Valli are all paying keen attention to those old black and white drawings of what the Quakers wore.

We were impressed that the magazine, a rather glossy lifestyle publication, had found a neat quote to suggest that even the early Friends had an appreciation of what style could do for a cause. The Countess of Kildare says in the Journal of the Life of Thomas Story, a seventeenth century American Quaker: 'If we should dress ourselves plain, people would gaze at us, call us Quakers, and make us the subject of their discourse and Town-talk'.

We're glad that the couturiers are looking at the past – open-toed sandals, socks and Gore-Tex trousers might not have inspired them to launch a 'Quaker look'.

Labels: economist, intelligent life, international quakers, thomas