Can Plymouth Brethren wear makeup?

On its "Clothing, hair and fashion" page, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church documents its cosmetics norm directly: Brethren women "would typically apply it minimally and modestly, avoiding anything bright or bold, enhancing their natural features and tones"¹. Bright or bold makeup is out. What is permitted is understatement.

The rules governing appearance are not published as a code. New Statesman's 2023 long-read recorded that they "are unwritten" and that "the extent to which they are followed varies between communities, even families"². Unwritten does not mean absent: the norms are administered locally and enforced socially.

Cosmetics sit inside a cluster of appearance norms the PBCC documents on the same page. Women wear skirts or dresses for daily activities and for church, keep their hair longer, and avoid unnatural hair colours or dyes¹. Men are clean-shaven with short, neat hair¹. The through-line is understatement rather than display.

The head covering is the most visible of these norms. The PBCC's page states that women wear headscarves at church meetings, and outside meetings wear "an item" in the hair, "likely to be a headband, a ribbon or a clip"¹. New Statesman described the same practice, noting women wear a "token," often a headband or bow, when not at church². Long hair carries doctrinal weight: the magazine reported that for a woman to cut her hair was treated as "an affront to God"².

Ex-member accounts describe these norms as expectations enforced far more tightly than the word "choice" implies, and as stricter in earlier decades. Reporting on former members records long uncut hair, minimal or no makeup, no hair dye or jewellery, and dresses or skirts as the settled standard for women, alongside the headscarf worn whenever scripture or hymns were involved^⚠︎.

The academic record situates dress and grooming inside the Doctrine of Separation, the teaching that governs how members live apart from wider society; modesty in appearance is one expression of that separated way of life³. Because the norms are administered assembly by assembly, as New Statesman noted, individual experiences differ in degree².

For a searcher, the short version is that makeup is permitted but bounded: minimal and natural, read as one signal of the modesty the fellowship requires of women. It is shaped by the same central authority that sets the rest of the way of life, the office held by Bruce D. Hales, and applied assembly by assembly².

The cosmetics norm is one entry in a longer set of appearance and lifestyle expectations documented on the rules members live under: dress, hair, head coverings, and the modesty framing that ties them together¹³. Read alongside the fellowship's own "what members are not allowed to do" page, the pattern is consistent: understatement over display⁴.