Thanks for your thoughts and the time you obviously put into them. Some people just want to push fashion and the discussion of it into the “fluff” category. The points you bring up here are thought both thought provoking and interesting–and where I thought others would have put their commenting energy instead of immediate dismissal of the subject. I am not good at expressing thoughts in writing or arguments, so for me, visual expression is very important. I agree that visual expression isn’t more likely to lend itself to abuse and sin than other forms of expression, it might get picked on more because it is visual and cannot be hidden.

I returned last night from a several-day canoe trip down the Green River, a periodic exercise in wilderness and relative solitude that I’ve come to treasure. Packing for the trip got me thinking about the nature of fashion and the discussion on this thread. I’m not enamored of clothing generally and would be content if we never started the practice, so I don’t tend to have a fashion sense that I want to push.

While on the river, I encountered a couple of dozen people over the course of the week, and I made a point of noticing what they were wearing — from simple underclothes and river sandals to more elaborate (and perpetually damp) layers. One gentleman even sported a necktie, though he didn’t apparently see the need for a shirt to go with it. With that as the backdrop, I got to thinking about the basic purposes of clothing. Ms. Lundell may have much more informed insights than I, but I got to these points: 1. protect wearer from elements (sun, wind, water, abrasion on rocks or sand, cactus thorns, rattlesnakes, and the like); 2. endeavor to reduce attention to sex (I’m not really sure that this is a meaningful purpose to clothing, since I think that concealing something tends to increase, not decrease, curiosity) but it seemed like a reason that I’ve had provided to me enough to believe that those who said it meant it); and 3. self-expression.

In re-reviewing this thread, it seems like self-expression is really the purpose that many are focused on, with some criticism coming from those who oppose using clothing as a form of self-expression because of its propensity to create class schisms based on distinctions of economic status.

I’m not sure I’m right, but as I was on a river with few to argue with me, I continued down this line of thought: if I’m right that that is the problem, shouldn’t we look for a fix for the economic differentiation, rather than limiting self-expression?

Also, as others have noted above, any kind of self-expression – by definition – has the potential to distinguish the individual from the group. The requirement that all dress in uniform, whether that uniform is white shirt and tie or jumper or JK Rowling’s house elves’ grey rags, is essentially a prior restraint on expression. In this vein, I’m a bit surprised at those who endorse clothing that says as little as possible (#277 and 278). Surely that position is limited to clothing, given the commenters. But what principle so limits it?

Can clothing become a separating force? Sure, but for it to do so, don’t those involved have to engage in perverse thinking – on the one hand, those selecting wardrobe can choose to express self-aggrandizement. On the other hand, those viewing another can choose to feel “under dressed.” In this context, it seems to me that feeling underdressed is the fashion equivalent of the envy King Benjamin condemned in certain of the poor of his society. But in either situation, the sin is not the clothing, but the assertion or perception of superiority associated with the expression.

If quality is a function of cost (my experience is that in most commodities, it certainly is) and if it is externally perceptible (any distinction that relate to quality over time will tend to become known either through advertising by the manufacturer or through word of mouth), the ownership of the quality brand can act as a surrogate of cost. On the river, cheap river sandals will wear out very fast. I’ve had more than one pair fail me in a variety of interesting ways in the past. So I brought Tevas on this trip. Most of the couple of dozen people I saw were wearing something akin to Tevas, as well. There’s a bit of a fashion thing going on, as I discovered the last time I bought Tevas, finding them considerably more expensive than I thought that a rubber-and-velcro composition for my foot should cost.

Still, once beyond the utility of varying qualities, self-expression is the operation. Fashion is self-expression. One particularly memorable teenaged, male canoer wore shorts, if the term can be used for such a vast amount of fabric that ended mid-shin and looked like something Odysseus might have swiped from Polyphemus’ cave on his way out. He had something to say about himself, perhaps, that couldn’t be said via something smaller and less likely to launch the wearer aloft in a burst of unexpected canyon wind.

While looking at that young man, it occurred to me that his choice of shorts (while outlandish to my taste) wasn’t different in kind than the exercise my wife and I engaged in a few weeks ago as we decided to purchase a couple of paintings from a gallery in Tucson. There was something about the artist’s style, her choice of subject, her expression, her thinking, that appealed to us. One of the paintings hangs now in my office where I can look at it. Though I bought the painting because it appealed to me, by selecting and displaying the painting, I’m derivatively saying something to others, even if it is nothing more substantial than “look — isn’t this worth looking at?”

This rambling thought led me to think more generally about the marketplace of ideas in printed expression; notably, T&S’s interest (echoed through the blogosphere) in its readership “circulation” and influence (by reference to T&S in news articles, etc.). There are various kinds of evaluation for any form of expression. Some artists never read reviews, preferring to evaluate their work via means other than popular opinion. Other artists create work with the express intention of involving others – others’ ideas, others’ responses, others’ reactions, others’ conversions. T&S seems an inevitable example of that kind of communication.

So back to the Book of Mormon’s condemnation of “fine twined linens”…

Is there something about visual expression that is more likely to lend itself to abuse and sin than other forms of expression? I don’t think so, but I’d be interested in others’ thoughts, as I’ve not long considered the question, nor do I have much expertise with it. But from my amauterish perspective, I can see no greater propensity for schism, self-aggrandizement, and envy resulting from visual self-expression than from any other form of self-expression.

C’mon! That was the funniest thing Prudence has posted. She should be encouraged after that one, given that the rest has been pure meanspirited troll.

Your hit-to-miss ratio is depressingly low lately. Try to limit yourself to goofy asides that are actually funny, will you?

I’m not saying we can rid ourselves of “all manner of -ites,” only that it should be our goal. The concept of no-ites is endorsed in 4 Nephi, when it’s offered as evidence of the people’s great happiness and unity, for there were no “manner of -ites; but they were in one, the children of Christ.” I suppose the temporal connection between Zion and no-ites might not be necessary, but given the way it is used in the text, I don’t see reason to believe the connection was coincidental. For that reason it seems safe to assume that our working to have “no manner of -ites” is a worthy objective.

As for Nephi, Alma and Moroni, they lived during times when the Nephites would have been happy just to have the Lamanites stop trying to kill them.

Why should we want to (or think that we _can_) rid our church of all manner of ites? Any number of great examples — Nephi, Moroni, Alma, and others — seem perfectly content to exist within the established ites system.