4.9 Dress.

The survey and the e-mail discussion revealed that Readers do not always adopt their official dress which is a black cassock, a white surplice and a blue scarf because some of them follow local custom and wear ordinary clothes at informal services and cassock albs at the Eucharist. There is also evidence from attendance at Readers' services that some Readers adopt unauthorised codes of dress. In particular some Readers decorate and taper their scarves to make them look more like stoles. This type of practice led to an amendment to the Readers' regulations which permits the use of the alb where it is acceptable to both the parish and diocese and forbids the decoration of scarves and the use of stoles. However it would appear from the survey that the unauthorised practice of decorating scarves is only relevant to a small minority because only 15% of respondents wanted the Reader's scarf to be more like a stole.