Mitt Romney, Mormons and Modern fashion

A few years ago I saw an obstetrician on one of those Maternity Ward type of shows and I found myself thinking automatically: ‘That man is Mormon.’ Why? I am not sure, because really the only thing that I could tell about him outside of his professional context was his dress: a dark suit, white shirt and tie. But possibly, that combination is getting more and more stereotyped as something that Mormon men do.

It occurred to me that maybe this image of the power suit, really only popularized in the 80’s, just happened to coincide with a period of explosive growth in the church’s worldwide missionary prominence: the widespread image of two youths in white shirts walking down the road happened to become universally recognizable also at a transitional period where boys' serving missions got closely associated with with their level of religious devotion, considered more of a commandment after this period than just an option.

The result of some of these coincidences is that if I had to guess, we have in recent times begun down a fork in the road of dressing in a manner unique to our culture that might actually end up giving this clothing symbolic significance for us like other formalized religious apparel has.

If you think about it, it already has such nearly arbitrary significance. White shirts don’t universally carry the connotation of respect or holiness that would brand a righteous priesthood bearer as such, we have really infused that meaning onto them over time and after associating that combination with men who are missionaries, bishops or GA's--and happen to be displaying particularly high levels of religiosity while wearing them.

And other religious clothing is probably quite similar, the difference is the respective age of the religions. The Mormon church is less than 200 years old, Catholicism, Islam and Hinduism, where religious clothing is more pronounced, have been around 1000+ years. So I think the small changes in psychology of wardrobe can be pretty small and end up adding up down the road.

Now in priesthood bearers the situation is that what was originally a purely cultural result of fashion (Joseph Smith obviously didn’t make up the missionary dress code) ends up being a barometer for the wearer’s level of devotion.

So that obstetrician on t.v. (and turns out he IS a local Stake President here in Beaverton), was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and colored tie—big deal. Right now those are all available in any department store. When the current fashions get very far away from that, though, it will be harder and harder to blend in if we are still outfitting ourselves that way for religious purposes, particularly if it becomes any kind of strict code (like it already is with missionaries). Over time this costume WILL communicate a man’s religion outwardly in this obvious way.