The Instructor 3.11.53

So wearing gold and using softer clothing is not to be cut off entirely; but the irrational impulses must be bridled, lest, carried off by too much relaxation, they hurl us into effeminacy. For luxury, running aground on satiety, is apt to leap and rear and throw off the charioteer, the Instructor, who, checking the reins from afar, leads and drives to salvation the human horse, the irrational part of the soul, made savage by pleasures and blameworthy appetites, stones, gold, embroidered clothing, and the rest of luxury; keeping in mind above all that holy saying: “Keeping your conduct among the Gentiles good, so that, though they slander you as evildoers, they may see your good works and glorify God.” The Instructor, then, allows us to wear plain clothing, white in color, as we said before, so that, making our own not what is embroidered by art but what is born of nature, and rejecting all that is deceptive and lies against the truth, we may embrace the single form and single face of the truth. Sophocles, reproaching a luxurious youth, says: “You are conspicuous in clothes that imitate women.”