“Kendall Jenner Went to Church in Statement Leather Trousers,” read a recent ELLE headline. This was in follow up to numerous articles dissecting the style of Hillsong (i.e. the celebrity church of choice) pastors and the Kardashian-Jenner clan’s looks for Kanye West’s ‘Sunday Service’ (in addition to the arguably overpriced merch West offered the public to accompany his Calabasas Christian pop-up at Coachella).
At the risk of sounding facetious, or worse, blasphemous, Christianity has perhaps never been so chic. While there has long-since been a sartorial standard upheld for church-goers, consisting of large hats, pastel suits, and conservative floral dresses (and centuries prior, the bejeweled rosaries and expensive gowns of upper class Catholics), God-fearing young Hollywood—or Hidden Hills, more specifically—seems to have updated the directive entirely.
Just how much fodder Kendall’s leather pants, Kim and North’s coordinating outfits, and Kylie’s charm-laden, waist-length braid has made for fashion blogs shows just how closely we’re paying attention. Kanye declared an all-white dress code for Easter Sunday, prompting a range of bridal-esque wear pared down with the likes of sneakers or Timberland boots. Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin were photographed leaving church last year (Baldwin in a white satin slip and sneakers, Bieber in a hoodie and tartan pants) to go clubbing. Selena Gomez once wore former boyfriend The Weeknd’s tour merch to a service.
Sunday worship is no longer ‘Sunday Best’—it’s a street style clinic. Even though the young, beautiful, and devout have unprecedented access to luxury, they instead often opt for clothes that wouldn’t be remiss on a Bushwick skater or art girl. Fittingly, VICE even made a documentary about Carl Lentz, the Hillsong pastor who prefers Supreme and Yeezys. We no longer have to wait for the tabloids to ingest the style of our favorite stars, because they are influencing daily us via our various social networking apps—and as a result, we’re unlearning all the rules on which we were raised.
Perhaps the church style of past generations with which we’ve become so familiar will soon be redundant, as will the concept of “dressing up” in general. The unspoken fashion mandate delineating evening wear, occasion wear, day wear and club wear has long-since been overthrown in our ever-growing quest to sartorially express our uniqueness, both online and IRL.
In the immortal words of Hozier, take me to church.