After a year of being COVID-cooped up at home, many of us feel like butterflies emerging from our cocoons and spreading our wings again. At long last we’re putting away our daily ensembles of sweatpants and pajama bottoms so we could at least be presentable (and comfortable) at Zoom meetings or Skype chats with friends and family.
Dr. La Verne Ford Wimberly of Tulsa, OK at first thought that the lockdown would only be a matter of a few weeks. She did not want to get out of the habit of dressing in her Sunday finest for church. So the 82-year-old retired teacher, Principal and Superintendent decided from the very get-go that she was NOT going to let COVID interfere with her deeply held spiritual routine of celebrating Sundays in high fashion.
While it’s true that her Metropolitan Baptist Church in Tulsa moved their services to the virtual realm, Dr. Wimberly continued her tradition of combining Faith and Fashion even if she had to do it at home.
Dr. Wimberly explains: “I just decided at that point, I was just going to get dressed as if I was going to church, so I would not get in the habit of just slouching around.”
When weeks stretched to months, she decided it’d be fun to share her adventure by posting her weekly selfies in her gorgeous chapeaus and finery on Facebook. And she’s kept that routine for 52 Sundays in a row!
Time to have your socks knocked off with some of her outfits.
But soon she felt her friends and fellow parishioners were paying too much attention to her millinery finery and clothes, so she started adding Bible verses and devotional messages to her posts. This is her latest post from last Sunday:
Dr. Wimberly: “I wanted not only to keep myself motivated, but I wanted to help keep others motivated as well, to inspire them, encourage them, and kind of eradicate some types and forms of depression, isolation, fear and despair.”
Amazingly, to date she has not repeated a single outfit. Dr. Wimberly admits that when she began work in 1963 as a teacher back in Chicago, she decided she would buy only quality clothes that would stand the test of time.
Dr. Wimberly also keeps a calendar journal of what she’s worn to avoid repeats. But when interviewed she admits she hadn’t made her April calendar yet – so we’ll just have to wait and see what she wears for Easter.
But in the meantime – more amazing outfits!
Even if you don’t celebrate Easter, I suspect most of you will enjoy listening to Bing Crosby croon a seasonal tune:
