Christian Fashion Week: Like Regular Fashion Week But With More Jesus

What makes a fashion show “Christian?” Is there a crucifixion at the end? Or at least weak coffee and home made lemon bars? One intrepid reporter ventured to Christian Fashion Week to find out.

Buzzfeed’s Jessica Misener traveled all the way to Tampa, Florida, America’s precancerous skin tag, in order to attend the second annual Christian Fashion Week. She found that while some of the expo’s offerings were what people might expect from a convention of self-identified Christians — modesty pamphlets and bedazzled shirts that read I ♥ MY HUSBAND or BIBLES NOT BAGS — most of it was just… regular fashion stuff.

If you want to cherry pick the OMG LOL RELIGIOUS PEOPLE AMIRITE! weirdness from the story, you could dwell on the fact that the event was started by a pastor and his wife, the founder of a group called Models4Jesus. Or you could talk about the “modest” line of swimwear that featured skirts and high waisted bottoms and didn’t really look all that much different than normal, non-modest swimwear (When you get right down to it, if your midriff is already exposed, what’s two more inches of flesh, really?). And I suppose you could snicker at the fact that last year, men weren’t allowed to witness the swimwear portion, ostensibly because the tempting female body is the root of all boners which are the root of all evil. Or that Christian Fashion Week isn’t even sure what Christian Fashion is. On its website, it acknowledges “There is no such thing as Christian fashion. It’s about fashion interpreted through a perspective of modesty and Christian values.” The site also says that Christian Fashion week is,

… more than just a collection of fashion shows – it’s a true movement fueled by a passion for modest clothing and for building an industry around its consumers.

Despite the brass’s claims that the week is about “modesty,” lot of the clothes look a hell of a lot like clothes in other fashion shows. Misener’s piece featured images of strappy gowns, strapless gowns, shorts, form fitting pants. A fucking kilt!

So unless “modesty” is achieved solely by forsaking short skirts and keeping your nipples and cleavage at bay, there’s really not much difference between most of regular clothes showcased at fashion week and the modest ones at Christian fashion week.

Is it that participants are also cloaked in invisible robes of sanctimony? Nope! Misener reported that the snootiness she encountered covering regular heathen fashion week was absent from its Christian counterpart. Everyone was real nice.

So, is there such thing as “Christian” fashion beyond nativity scene costumes or crowns of thorns? Not really. Turns out that any fashion is Christian fashion if you’re fashioning with Jesus in your heart and fabric on your underboob.