A good case can be made for plain, modest clothing befitting the culture you're living in
However the rejection of any distinctive clothing usually symbolizes a rejection of any distintive ministry. It's like a soldier who won't wear a uniform. He probably has a problem.
Exactly. The sisters in my town were French (originally) and had a large head dress that required starching, pleating, etc. It obviously needed changing.
However, now they all stump along (they’re all elderly - there haven’t been any vocations there for decades) in their polyester pants and pastel tops with their hair cropped or curled by the same salon that does the hair of every other old lady in town. Nobody even knows they’re members of a religious order.
Again, except for a couple of them, they’re not raving heretics. But they sure can’t be very happy right now, nobody recognizes them as sisters, and I think they’d actually be relieved if the bishop ordered them back into habits (it’s a diocesan order, so he could do that).
There’s a lot of pride involved in this. Some of the earlier superiors drank the Vatican II koolaid, and even against their better judgment, did some things that were serious mistakes. And now they don’t want to back down and admit it.
So somebody else has got to intervene.