In the first place, I would discard all strong positive reds, blues, and purples for the dresses, as inappropriate. To wear garments of these bright hues was the prerogative of kings, emperors, and great generals, and it is quite out of keeping with the spirit of the New Testament to clothe its personages in these imperial colors.
White, dull yellow, brown, and black are the colors to which I should principally adhere. Linen, bleached and unbleached, goats’ hair, and wool of all shades, from creamy white to sooty black, would be the materials.
Clemens of Alexandria says: “All dyed colors should be avoided in dress, for these are far away from man’s need and from truth; and besides they give proof of evil in the inward disposition.”
Tertullian, who wrote about two hundred years after Christ, has a whole chapter denouncing the iniquity of dyed colors.
Now it is hardly conceivable that these early Christian writers would have fulminated against red, purple, and blue garments if Christ and his apostles had been in the habit of wearing them.
Secondly, I should endeavor, while preserving the tunic and outer cloak or pallium, to give to these garments something of an Oriental appearance. There is not much scope for doing this with the tunic. Rich men, like Joseph of Arimathea or Nicodemus, would wear long tunics reaching to their ankles; but it is very doubtful whether Christ himself, who denounces the scribes on account of their loving to go in long clothing, would wear a garment of this description.
The women would have two tunics, one over the other, with short or long sleeves, but never with the open sleeves of the Greek women.
The under tunic (which would, in fact, be the Roman stola) would reach to the feet. The upper one would be shorter, and embroidered or ornamented with colors.
The pallium or cloak, both of the men and the women, should have a fringe; not a heavy gorgeous one, like the Assyrian kings, but a thin light one.
In the 22d chapter of Deuteronomy, Moses commands: “Thou shalt make thee fringes upon the four quarters of thy vesture,” and in the Book of Numbers these fringes are again ordained. When we consider how particular the Jews were in observing their law, we may assume, as a fact, that the cloak or outer garment of the New Testament would have a fringe, and this would at once give it a Jewish or Oriental character. Broad vertical stripes again, either on the tunic or the cloak, of a different colored wool to the garment itself, would be unlike Greek or Roman fashions, and would be perfectly allowable.