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Historically, modesty of dress has had important symbolic meaning for leaders andmembers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints. Brigham Young, second president of the Church, often warned women against following the "indecent" fashions of the world, challenging them to separate themselves from women of the world and dress accordingly. Almost thirty years after Young's death, President Joseph F. Smith and his counselors issued "A Call to the Women of the Church," expressing concern that "our women are prone to follow the demoralizing fashions of the world [including] exhibitions of immodesty and of actual indecency in their attire . . . seemingly oblivious in this respect to the promptings and duties of true womanhood."1 In response, the general boards of the Relief Society, Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association (YLMIA), and Primary, led by Relief Society general president Amy Brown Lyman, issued dress guidelines for all Mormon women.2 Although Church leaders made shorttermefforts to define Churchwide dress standards in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these attempts did not result in either a widely recognized definition of modesty or a set of official instructions regarding women's dress. Instead, despite the attempts of Young, Lyman, and others, modesty of dress was almost a non-issue during this time.
On February 13, 1951, Elder Spencer W. Kimball delivered a speech to students at a Brigham Young University Devotional entitled "A Style of Our Own: Modesty in Dress and Its Relationship to the Church."3 Kimball's talk defined standards of modesty for LDS women in the twentieth century and also articulated enduring rationales for proper dress. Generally regarded as the "first" modesty talk of the twentieth century, it caused a stir at BYU and elsewhere. This address and the phrase "a style of our own" became classics; many talks, articles, and LDS publications on modesty, beginning in the 1960s, reference either the phrase or the actual text of Kimball's devotional.4
Clothing has been the subject of scriptural injunctions and a perennial topic of Church leaders' concern. Subtle changes in both dress standards and rationales for modest dress in the latter half of the twentieth century reflect the LDS Church's teachings and attitudes toward chastity and women, the feminine ideal, and changing women's roles. Definitions of modest...