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Do people in the church have worse taste than people in general? Sometimes I wonder. I’m not a metrosexual, nor an interior designer, but I do feel the fashion police would have their cells full if they came round to our ward.
There’s a family in the church who have mostly daughters, lovely girls (not my type admittedly), but who have the most dreadful dress sense. They’re not the only ones. A lot of the women seem to wear bizarre, or tasteless combos. The men tend to have their fashion sense suppressed, since we all wear more or less the same clothing.
Maybe it’s also the fact that in our temples and churches, we seem to prefer flat mass produced “prints” to original artworks and paintings. The artwork in our magazines and books varies from the sublime (usually non-LDS paintings, I’m afraid to say) to the ridiculous (those silly staged photographs and camp paintings)
A lot of my friends in the church have dreadful nicknacks and kitsch that they’ve picked up from temple shops and LDS online bookstores… what do you think?
I’ll freely admit my fashion sense is also duly suppressed, so I’m probably not one to comment. Have you been to Wal-Mart lately? Just saying. 😮 :wtf: (I know you don’t live in the US, but . . . check out peopleofwalmart dot com if you want a shock to your sensibilities.)Quote:temple shops and LDS online bookstores
I try to avoid them. Period. Doesn’t work always, since my wife likes some of the stuff, but being relatively poor has it’s advantages when it comes to those abominations.
I am a horrible dresser. I have no fashion sense. I don’t know if it’s because I am LDS, grew up in Idaho on a farm, or just male. Same with me. I was actually quite interested in fashionable dressing when I was in my early twenties, but when I joined the Church, I started dressing like Harold B. Lee and that was the end of it since then — I stopped caring. I don’t have a lick of fashion sense now. An neither does anyone in our family. We dress for utility and comfort, not for fashion. Except, I love blue shirts because they set off my eyes 
We seem to value modesty, and thrift…which often leads to bad taste, I think. Gaudy and outlandish fashions are not valued in the church, in my opinion. So, we kind teach our kids this.
Being thrifty is good…but it often leads to being cheap. Many mormons are pretty cheap…which is also bad taste.
Actually round here, it’s the gaudy with the women. One lovely old lady likes rainbow type stuff, like out of some Hippie’s nightmare. The family of girls I mentioned (who are also great folk otherwise) wear really cheap looking jewelry, but with color schemes that remain seared onto my retina for the rest of the day! Another lady wears sort of lacy things that would be revealing, if there weren’t TGs beneath! One of the more eccentric members dresses like Minnehaha (Hiawatha’s girlfriend) – or is it Pocahontas? – on a bad day.
The best dressed ladies tend to be missionaries, but even they are not immune to massive hairspray hairdos if they’re older ones.
I’m worried it’s infectious. Am I doomed to become another one of these?
p.s. Checked out People of Walmart. We have a few round here. Luckily it’s just a few.
Heber13 wrote:Being thrifty is good…but it often leads to being cheap. Many Mormons are pretty cheap…which is also bad taste.
I’ve heard that tipped positions tend to receive less in Utah than in other states…though this is purely anecdotal. The joke was that when you say “tipping,” all they hear is “tithing” and think 10%.
Yes. Most LDS women I know dress cheap…and old…and frumpy.
There is no law anywhere that we have to dress this way.
I work in as and executive assistant, if I dressed how most women in my ward dress, my boss would take me shopping. period. Yes I were dress suits, with pencil skirts and matching jackets to church. I also tend to wear more stylish outfits all the time, just who I am. We have a woman whose husband is the 1st Con. in Bish. and he dresses in a nice suit every Sunday, she dresses in a jumper that looks like a freaking potato sack. The contrast between the two of them together is night and day, he looks put together, she looks depressed. Maybe she is…
Roy wrote:Heber13 wrote:Being thrifty is good…but it often leads to being cheap. Many Mormons are pretty cheap…which is also bad taste.
I’ve heard that tipped positions tend to receive less in Utah than in other states…though this is purely anecdotal. The joke was that when you say “tipping,” all they hear is “tithing” and think 10%.
I’ve always tipped at 10%.
😳 It’s not just clothes… I’m thinking architecture, some of our modern meeting houses are completely inappropriate. You can be in an old town somewhere, and suddenly see this spike with a small chalet behind it, and you know that’s the LDS chapel.
I think most people have bad taste, at least most Americans. Sorry to say. I think within Mormonism, it’s the modesty + thriftiness + frumpy norms in some wards. But I’m fairly stylish for a Mormon. Still, as an executive, my cheapness does hold me back in contrast to some of my more materialistic colleagues. I refuse to spend $300 on a shirt, although I could possibly talk myself into a $300 dress for an event. I won’t buy Chanel when I have kids’ college educations and missions to pay for. I refuse to spend more than $200 on a designer handbag. I have yet to buy Ferragamo shoes or Jimmy Choo (although some of my Mormon friends do have these – people buy what they can afford that they want to spend their money on). I have friends who are very stylish, but usually we Mormons, even if we can afford it, cap out at Anthropologie, J. Crew, Ann Taylor, DKNY and the like. Stores my boss considers “low end.” I think it’s because we’re just less materialistic, and the bar is low at church. I can look like a million bucks at church without spending a million bucks.
When it comes to art, art requires the ability to be in touch with emotion and to express one’s innermost feelings freely. Mormons are a pretty repressed lot. Some Mormon art is quite good, but most is ghastly; again, this is probably true everywhere. We’re just a microcosm. I know someone (not LDS) who bought a pair of earrings made from actual decapitated snake heads. So, people have bad taste all over the place.
On the upside, there are several Mormon fashion blogs out there, and I’ve been impressed with some of them.
I have actually walked out the door and discovered at work that I was wearing two different shoes. 😯 :clap: So I can’t say much about good fashion.hawkgrrrl wrote:I think within Mormonism, it’s the modesty + thriftiness + frumpy norms in some wards.
Hawk nailed it, exactly what I was going to say. Thrift + Frumpy. Our culture has encouraged young couples to have families faster than resources, so your’re gonna see a lot of decade-old hand-me-down dress, thrift store suits, and clearance item closets.
hawkgrrrl wrote:When it comes to art, art requires the ability to be in touch with emotion and to express one’s innermost feelings freely. Mormons are a pretty repressed lot.
Second bullseye! There’s some good stuff out there, here and there. But the most iconic and classic example is the Osmonds: Donny & Marie. Sequin dresses, sparkly white suits, purple socks, and permanently plastered fake smiles and jazz hands waving. All is always well in Zion.
:sick: At least we don’t have too many low slung pants in church. Can’t stand seeing cracks all the time. Used to work in a shop, and had to keep an eye on customers. Anyway, there was a couple, and both of them had theirs on display. A couple of links, the first one on BYU fashion that contains many links to Mormon fashion blogs: http://www.wheatandtares.org/2011/04/19/modest-is-hottest-a-look-at-byu-fashion/ The next one on Mormon art:
http://www.wheatandtares.org/2009/03/05/mormon-art-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/ And one on the lack of a “Great Mormon Novel”:
http://www.wheatandtares.org/2008/11/24/twilight-and-the-great-mormon-novel/ Most of these are somewhat humorous looks at Mormon culture and its unattractive by products.
hawkgrrrl wrote:… I refuse to spend
more than $200on a designer handbag…. Wh wha what?
200 dollars for a HANDBAG! wtf?
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