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Mary, Queen Of Style: Documenting Catholic Modest Fashion In Special Collections, Jillian M. Ewalt

Marian Library Faculty Presentations

In postwar America, Catholic teenage girls found themselves at the center of a debate. Everyone, it seemed, had a different opinion about what kind of clothing they should wear. Two modest fashion movements emerged that aimed to solve this problem. Supply the Demand for the Supply (SDS) was a lay initiative founded by teenage girls in the Midwest that quickly spread into a national Catholic youth movement. Meanwhile, the Marilyke Crusade, orchestrated by parish priest Father Bernard Kunkel and the Purity Crusade of Mary Immaculate, promulgated and sold modest clothing based on a particular brand of fear-mongering, Fatima-centric Marian devotion. …