It’s Calvin Klein, Daddy

by Tiffany Wismer

This post was originally published on March 4, 2025 as part of The Dress Code column in The Colorado Springs Independent.

I was 17 years old. My friends and I were going out to a party, and we had spent a lot of time crafting the perfect outfits for our adventure. It was the 90s, and we’d visited Hot Topic earlier that day. Someone (not me) may have been wearing a pair of vinyl pants.

Finally ready, we came down the stairs to show my mom, with pride, what we had done. I realized even before she spoke that, somewhere, somehow, I’d made a grievous error. Her eyebrows nearly left her face.

“Why are you wearing that?”

Please now picture that scene in Clueless, where Cher’s father complains about her tiny white date dress. I gave my mother a puzzled pout. It was cute… wasn’t it? Unlike Cher, I didn’t have Calvin Klein’s good name, or Cher’s sense of style, to defend me. I changed into something else.

It’s possible my mother’s question was tattooed on my brain that night because now every time I look at people’s clothes I wonder: why are you wearing that?

Turns out there are many reasons why. Many good reasons, and bad reasons, and odd reasons, and delightful reasons. These reasons range from ridiculously shallow to depths that border on mythological. We dress because of pop culture, sentiment, ceremony, nostalgia. We dress to honor a person or a history that is dear to us. We dress for convenience, practicality. We dress so that we will be noticed. We dress so that we will not be noticed.

This is happening all over the world. Literally everywhere. And I find that fascinating. Every nation, every religion, every family or social group, and ultimately every individual human, has its own spoken or unspoken dress code. In this column, I hope to uncover the stories we are telling through what we wear.

In a recent interview on The Who What Wear Podcast, fashion designer Rachel Scott connected how we dress with how we speak. “I’ve always been obsessed with language, and I think that’s really how I even view fashion, really,” she said. “The clothes that we wear are like our vocabulary.”

When you choose to put on a vintage t-shirt or a suit or a pair of Crocs, what are you saying? Are you intentionally saying something? Unintentionally? What is it? Most of us overthink, worrying about how others will perceive us, and our sense of style dissolves into blandness. It’s like agreeing with everyone you meet just to get along with them. Like word choices, fashion choices are active, passive, shy, bold, rebellious, or codependent.

Maybe my mom’s question will haunt you now, like it does me (sorry). But really… Why are you wearing that?

A Sermon on Style

by Tiffany Wismer

 This article was originally published on April 4, 2025 as part of The Dress Code column in The Colorado Springs Independent.

I visited a church a few weeks ago and heard a sermon which was (ostensibly) about modesty. Modesty, the preacher somehow twisted the Scripture to say, means you don’t draw attention to yourself. You cover up as much as possible — not just your body, but also your personality.

It is not Christlike to be seen — especially if you’re a woman.

I will now attempt to say something helpful, rather than simply airing long-held personal grievances against this type of pastor / church / sermon. I have no desire to attack true Christian values. Perhaps for that very reason, I can’t let this one pass.

What are we actually talking about here? Is the Venus de Milo statue immodest? What about a ballerina? What about a bodybuilder? If the answer to any of those is “yes,” then I have some questions about your theology.

This pastor was not interested in providing definitions. He was promoting a very black and white practical application of what he believed the text to be saying. When he said you should cover up as much as possible, he meant it. Oh boy, did he ever.

“Men,” he said at one point, “you are the masters of your household. If something in your wife’s closet or your daughter’s closet is immodest, go into their closets, take it out, and throw it in the trash.”

The most troubling moment was when he recommended that fathers keep their daughters from playing sports like volleyball, swimming, or cheerleading, because the uniforms are too revealing.

Yes, a teenage girl playing volleyball or swimming is likely wearing an outfit that reveals her body to some degree. That’s true. Her muscles, her athleticism, her beautiful, functional, miraculous body. If you make it sexual, that’s on you.

And is he honestly suggesting that if we’re all entirely covered up nobody would think about sex? If that were true, the human race would have died out in the Victorian era. And psychologically, we all know it isn’t true. We love mystery. The more something is covered, the more you want to uncover it.

Expressing your personality or culture through what you wear is not immoral. Flaunting your wealth by how you dress may be. Making other people feel less-than definitely is. But wearing flattering and self-expressive clothing shows respect for yourself, for others, and for your society. Surely true modesty has something to do with how we treat people, doesn’t it?

Maybe none of this is begging to be said. Maybe it’s not my place to say it. But I’ve heard women shamed from the pulpit one too many times now. And it’s usually by pastors who are so ignorant about normal human life that I’m tempted to wonder if they are literally of another world — not Heaven but another planet.

Love is Made of Linen

by Tiffany Wismer

This article was originally published on April 18, 2025 as part of The Dress Code column in The Colorado Springs Independent.

Honeyfolk Clothing has a website with four items of clothing for sale. The maker of these clothes, Heidi Iverson, crafts them entirely by hand. The yarn she uses comes from a local shepherdess and is spun at a local wool mill. One of the items for sale is a white linen slip that costs $168. Each piece is made to order and will ship in four weeks.

Looking at that linen slip, I felt like I was living in a pre-industrial community, with wildflowers in my hair, about to wed the local blacksmith. My grandmother made it for me to wear on my wedding night, and it will be an heirloom for generations.

The modern woman can buy ten pieces of lingerie for half that price on Temu. They’ll go into the trash after a few washes, and wind up in a landfill. And oh yeah, they were made by forced labor. But hey, that dopamine hit is definitely worth it, right?

In Elizabeth Gaskell’s classic novel “North & South,” the young heroine, Margaret, lives in England in the 1850s, when clothes were still made by hand. It was a time when the production of clothing was more agriculture than industry. When her family is forced to move from the agricultural South to the industrialized North, Margaret meets Mr. Thornton, who runs a cotton mill, and takes an instant dislike to him and his way of life.

Margaret eventually comes to understand Mr. Thornton, but early in the story she is strongly against his philosophy of mass-produced cotton clothing. In Brian Percival’s beautiful film adaptation of the novel, there’s a moment when Margaret’s cousin is first introduced to the idea of clothes made in a mill. She rejects the idea as impossible, saying, “I am sure that we shall always wear linen.’’

I’ve been working through a book called “Fibershed,” which chronicles the efforts of a group of farmers who are attempting to re-create something like the agriculture represented in Gaskell’s story. They are working within a contained ecosystem where every aspect of clothing production is farmed locally, right down to the indigo grown to create blue dye for jeans.

It takes intense effort and time to produce clothes purely from a local fibershed. The industrial option is faster and takes less effort. But maybe effort is what we need. Time is certainly what we have. If the production of clothing was entirely stopped, there would still be enough clothes currently in circulation to clothe everybody on earth several times over. We could stop mass production and return to a slower, more deliberate way of making clothes, if we chose to.

I don’t think that choice is out of reach. Passionate, idealistic people will continue to create beautiful pieces using “slow fashion” methods. We might not be living in an agrarian utopia, but we can still buy these beautiful things and keep them in second-hand circulation. We can even pass them down as heirlooms. And if anybody knows the local blacksmith, you can give him my number.