In February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky showed up at the White House to broker a deal with U.S. President Donald Trump. Unfortunately for Zelensky, he attired himself similarly to a Slavic wannabe-rapper, in tactical pants and a crewneck, both of the same color. He might as well have actually worn a track suit. As soon as he approached Trump, the American — always clad in expensive blue suits, a crisp white shirt with cufflinks, and a silk tie — began ribbing his Ukrainian counterpart. “He’s all dressed up today,” Trump said, pointing to Zelensky’s lack of suit, collar, or tie. At least he wore long sleeves: the Ukrainian president often makes public appearances in a form-fitting t-shirt.

Zelensky’s trip to the Oval Office on Monday saw a (slight) improvement in the Ukrainian leader’s wardrobe. According to Axios, White House officials unofficially requested that Zelensky wear a proper suit when meeting with the President of the United States. Elvira Gasanova, a Ukrainian fashion designer responsible for much of Zelensky’s attire, shared that Zelensky would be wearing “a suit, but the style still remains in a military key with the same symbolism,” but would not be wearing a tie. Sure enough, Zelensky shook Trump’s hand wearing a jacket with high, short lapels, similar to those worn by military leaders, over a black button-up shirt with a collar. Not exactly standard business attire, but Trump noted the improvement. “I don’t believe it,” the American president said, smiling and gesturing to Zelensky’s lapels and collar. He slapped a spray-tanned hand on Zelensky’s shoulder and declared, “I love it.”

The Western world today is, unfortunately, dominated by slobbishness. Men walk the streets in sweatpants and undershirts, women in yoga pants and tank tops. College boys show up for class in cargo shorts and “graphic tees,” while college girls may wear anything from jeans and a hoodie to pajama pants and a crop top. A plaid, collared shirt and a pair of dark blue jeans is reserved for a first date and sneakers are the most pervasive form of footwear. In fact, the situation has become so dire that many men’s shoe manufacturers have begun breeding hideous sneaker-dress shoe hybrids — tan or grey or even navy blue wingtips with sporty white, rubber outsoles and white laces to match — and then pairing the goblinoid shoes with too-tight suits and marketing it as the next hot thing in menswear.

Dressing well is not some traditionalist ritual to conjure ages past from their immortal graves, nor is it an exercise in snobbery or elitism. (For those who have eyes to see, the “elites” in society today also often dress like slobs. Tech giants Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are prime examples. Musk wears a suit jacket over a printed t-shirt and keeps his baseball cap on indoors, while Zuckerberg favors slim-fit jeans and plain t-shirts or hoodies.) Dressing well actually upholds three goods: order, justice, and dignity.

In ages past, people would dress in a manner consistent with their social positions. A butler, for example, would dress differently from both the lord of a manor house and the footmen under the butler’s authority. In part, this was a uniform: much like in the dress of a military officer, the butler’s attire allowed guests to distinguish him from the footmen and perhaps avoid what would have been then an embarrassing social faux pas. But more than this, the butler’s attire — just like that of the lord of the manor or that of the footmen — was a means of upholding order. By dressing in his way, the butler recognized that society must be ordered, that order itself is a good, and the butler thus not only interacted with that order but upheld it, taking upon his own shoulders a little bit of the weight of that order. So did the lord of the manor. So did the footmen.

Now, this is not to say, of course, that Westerners ought to dress in a manner denoting their class, which today often has less to do with the responsibilities one inherits but the wealth one earns. But it is to say that a failure to dress well erodes the order of society. Do not dress, perhaps, in a uniform suited to a social or economic class, but do dress in a manner suited to the occasion at hand. Wearing a three-piece suit to go bowling with the boys might be a touch ostentatious, but wearing a collared shirt and a pair of crisp, sharp slacks would not be out of place. Wearing a blazer, tie, and pair of penny loafers for a first date would also not be out of place, and would certainly be much more appropriate than wearing, say sweatpants and a sleeveless t-shirt.

This leads, fittingly enough, to justice and dignity. The word “justice” is too often considered in the punitive sense, that of punishing criminals. But the virtue of justice is actually just giving to another what he is due. In some cases, like those of the criminals, this can necessitate deprivation — of life, of liberty, of property — but in other cases it can necessitate a giving. For example, paying an employee an honest wage for honest work is a matter of justice, and depriving him of it, in that case, is an injustice, both morally and legally. In the sense of dressing well, justice is closely linked to order: giving to the occasion its due. A tan corduroy sport coat and bright red bow tie may be appropriate for a college professor to wear while delivering a lecture, but not while attending a funeral. A short-sleeve collared shirt with stripes and a pair of white trousers may be acceptable attire on the golf course, but would likely be frowned upon if worn to a court appearance.

Of course, justice is also closely linked to dignity, and this leads to the distinctly human aspect of dressing well. The man walking down the street in sweatpants and a hoodie is made in the image and likeness of God just as much as the man sauntering just a few yards behind in a suit and tie. Now, neither man may have any idea that he is made in the image and likeness of God, neither may care, for that matter. It could be that the man in the suit is only wearing the suit because he has some concept of order, and thus justice is lurking somewhere in his periphery. It could be that the man in sweatpants and a hoodie attends church every Sunday and knows he was made in the image and likeness of God. In some sense, it doesn’t matter.

One of the unique facets of human nature is that humans are both a body and a soul. The Dominican friar and Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas clarified in the 13th century that human beings are essentially — meaning in their essence — a body-soul composite. That is to say, what makes a human human is that combination of body and soul: a body without a soul or a soul without a body is not fully human, its essence has been split. The 20th century author C.S. Lewis also wrote of this idea. In the character of the senior demon Screwtape in the eponymous “The Screwtape Letters,” Lewis writes that humans “constantly forget … that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls.” Of course, Lewis does not mean “animal” in the sense of cattle or swine, but as a differentiation from the fallen angels, whose essence is pure spirit.

While this concept has broad and multitudinous applications throughout Christian thought, one area frequently overlooked is that of dress. Justice spans the narrow gap between order and dignity and unites them: the virtue demands, first, that one dress well for the sake of society, for the sake of the order which society today is so sorely lacking.

(A brief note: This is not to say that dressing well will restore moral order to modern society. In ages past, cruel and callous knights would wear gleaming armor and fine livery, highwaymen were clad in dashing and expensive outfits, and even common gangsters wore suits and ties. However, even in each of those instances, the violation of the moral order coincided with the decay of the physical order. Those knights who committed crimes or violated the code of chivalry, if discovered, were disgraced, often barred from carrying their families’ crests, and had frequently to hide their faces behind metal visors or under woolen hoods to eschew legal justice or vengeance. Highwaymen would mix and match colors, patterns, and even fabrics that the respectable men of the day would have deemed outlandish, ugly, or even indicative of some mental or sexual perversion. Gangsters — particularly in the mafia — may have begun by wearing pinstripe suits and felt fedoras in the first two or three decades of the 20th century, but quickly devolved into wearing loud, garish outfits, frequently in materials like silk, much shinier than the standard wool used in suits and trousers. Okay, so that wasn’t all that brief.)

The highest of orders, as it relates to society, is the moral order. Other orders, be they as simple as dressing well or putting a shopping cart back in its stall, are supports or little pillars buttressing that moral order. Once those little pillars are crumbled, the moral order is far easier to topple. Likewise, if once the slab or roof which is moral order is removed, then of what use are the pillars? It may be impossible to determine which came first, the decay of the moral order or the destruction of the little pillars, but there is no denying the coincidence of the two. Did young men start dressing like slobs because internet pornography trained them to believe that they are little more than animals? Or did it become easier for young men to become pornography addicts because they had shed the proud garb of men and begun wearing rags for clothes? Again, it may be impossible to determine, but the two most certainly coincide and most certainly aid one another.

Then to dignity: With the understanding that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God, justice would demand that humans dress themselves well, for the sake of dignity. The reason is twofold. First, dressing well is a means of honoring the imago Dei in oneself, of recognizing that oneself was lovingly made in the image and likeness of God. Secondly, dressing well is a means of honoring and recognizing the imago Dei in others, of dressing in a manner fit for speaking to and interacting with one made in the image and likeness of God, and not forcing him to look upon a shapeless, monochromatic heap of rags, zippers, and overstylized logos. This second aspect of dressing well for the sake of dignity, naturally, relates to dressing well for the sake of order and emphasizes the moral dimension of aesthetics.

To cite Lewis again, “When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.” Just so, dressing well, even when uncomfortable or maybe “embarrassing,” is a simple means of daily bolstering one’s support for order, for justice, and for the dignity due to oneself and others as made in the image and likeness of God.

Now, none of this is to say that wearing shorts and a t-shirt is an abomination in the eyes of God or that wearing a polo shirt and chinos to church on Sunday instead of a tailcoat and a pair of white gloves and spats is a grave sin. Dressing well doesn’t necessitate spending thousands of dollars on cashmere, flannel, wool, and silken garments, nor does it require bespoke tailoring and hand-woven accessories. It may mean wearing a tie when a t-shirt would be a little more comfortable or putting on a pair of leather penny loafers instead of a slightly more breathable pair of pleather dress-shoe-sneaker monstrosities. Look at Zelensky, after all! All he did was wear a collared shirt and a jacket and earned himself a pat on the back from the President of the United States.

All of this is to say that dressing well is a fairly simple, quiet, but meaningful way to bring a little order, a little virtue, and a little dignity to a world sorely lacking all three.