TRENCH COUTURE:

Making peace with my warrior empath...

Proverbs 31:16-17: “She considers a field, and buys it: with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard. She girds her loins with strength, and strengthens her arms.”

• Sometimes Beauty is War.

• One element of myself is a plainspoken warrior and one element of me is a sensitive soul and deep empath. I am also a lifelong lover of things of the realm of beauty, including fabric and garments, sometimes known as “fashion.”

  Sometimes the pressure is way too much and hence, why I dress for “Trench Couture”, an armor not only from Ephesians 6, the full armor of God, but clothing for protection of my physical self. Sometimes beauty is war, like a “ trench”. I NEVER dress to reveal! Never!

  The marketing machine of “ beauty” is massive, especially for women. The huge pressure for women to be a certain template is relentless...flattening the soul and spirit under heaps of condemnation, as though we are never enough, no matter what we do.

  This debate has been hashed out long ago...

  Feminism, misogyny as well as misandry affects us all.

  And yet...I am no longer a feminist nor a hater of men...nor do I want to be on display.

  I have a theory of sorts and it has developed within my spirit over time, especially as I get older.

  Absorbing the mendacious “diktats” of high fashion magazines, the demand is to embrace SEXY as the prime “membership of the tribe of female” and we are to rue the day when one of us says NO. How dare we refuse?? Well, I did.

  This does not mean “ de-beautifying” or “uglifying” ( phrases I created), and whatever those might mean. It simply means stepping back from the demands to present ourself as being “ desirable and available.“ As I have spoken at length about all this before, based on my very blunt experiences in the original sexual revolution of my own youth, sex is vastly over-rated. The overwhelming selling of it is flat-out wrong and leaves wreckage in its wake. I am one recipient of that.

  I remember earlier in my youth...when I lived from 1975 to 1979 in the beautiful emerald city of Seattle, I was working in a garment factory, not remotely glamorous work. I would, every three to four months, scrape together the funds to get a radical hair style, as one of the tiny handful of things I would do to attempt to feed my spirit. This also included intense makeup from a smaller store across from Nordstrom in downtown Seattle. The haircut was truly “rad”...and literally my hair emerged as 1/4” long. I would stun people at first. This was my first foray into being disaffected by the demand for women to be “fluffy” and pliable. I did not feel fluffy or pliable, I felt gnarly and the haircut reflected that. I was gaunt and angular, not shapely and did not draw traditional men. I would either draw or repel ( usually the latter.)

  However, that experiment did fall flat after awhile as I got out of my twenties.

  I genuinely love men, despite my struggles and failures with them. I love the partnerships of male and female, as I discussed in my previous post.

  Life began with male and female joined.

  However, sex does not occur every day, most of the time.

  Since I remain unmarried and celibate, I focus on the spiritual aspect, the “holy cerebral” of W.E.W.

  I wonder if...beauty can be enjoyed as separate from sex?? Is that a revolutionary idea, bodacious in its query? Can the healing realm of beauty be celebrated without the obsession of sex?

  For me, it most certainly can.

  In my collection of saved fashion photos from high fashion mags I once subscribed to in the 1990s and early “ aughts” back in San Francisco, there is one very favorite photo, likely from Harper’s Bazaar. There is a dress, what I call “sublime understatement.” It is obviously a high- fashion dress, designed by a modern version of Lanvin, sophisticated in its core and yet with it has a fascinating innocent presence to it and certainly why it has continued to hold my attention all these years. (apologies for no photo of the dress, not do-able.)

  The dress is in a sumptuous shade of red, likely a crimson or scarlet shade, on the edge between cool and warm. What I found fascinating is that the dress, although it is a grown-up dress with definite sophistication, also had an innocent childlike element to it, like a simple girlish frock, not sexy but poignant, like the longings of my own heart. It appears to be made of a heavy cotton-linen blend, with inverted pleats in the moderately full skirt, sleeveless and slightly cut out at the sleeve back, a high bodice with no cleavage, and side-seam pockets, in which the serious-looking model had one of her hands enveloped. The photo is shot from the side. The juxtaposition was startling to me, the blend of high fashion that was tender, not sexual, and the innocence presented carefully and with subtlety. This drew my heart, feminine beauty without rampant seduction. Seduction is truly exhausting…(this is from my own experience…from long ago…)

  I like some rebels in garments, not for flash but for a statement of those of us who resonate differently. For as verbally bold as I am, I am actually shy physically and do not remotely desire to show off.

  Rei Kawakubo, radical garment designer from a company called “Comme de Garcon”... is a creator of beauty that speaks to the mind instead of the body. She is quoted as saying she designs for strong women who attract men with their minds and not their bodies. When I first read that statement, I immediately resonated with it.

  Rei Kawakubo was born in Japan in 1942 and I would imagine her formative years being in the horror of WW2, would have had a major influence on her sensibilities. While I do not know all the influences on her life, she utterly rejected the Western dedication to female pulchritude. Her clothes were bold and yet hidden, with not scrap of fluff or flirtatious in them. While I am not advocating for dour, I agree with a major calming to the flaunt of the physical.

  It is my hope that enough of us can shift the hammering consciousness of fashion, toward a tempering of the rawness of the worship of sex and more toward honoring feminine beauty as a Godly presence of peace, humility and a Servant’s heart.

  Holy Spirit as always, nudges me in interesting titles for each of my weekly pieces. This one is a blend of His and mine, from a phrase, “trench couture”, I found written down from my own notes from many years ago when I lived in San Francisco, a warrior place all the way. I am also writing for my second Substack core, called “Clothing as a Refuge”, which I have not done a post for in quite awhile.

  Let God work in the invisible realm...and see your soul be nurtured from the better place than the temporal attention of the world...

  Wendy Elizabeth Williams, Friday, January 23, 2026

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  --Please pray for me, as a “micro-entrepreneur”, business of one! Thank you, Wendy