‘Soulful’ fashion: an interview with Mary Harper
Wednesday, March 4, 2026
Mary Dufresne Harper
Originally from New Orleans, Mary Harper is the author of "The Liturgical Style Guide" on Catholic fashion. She’s connected to Florida as an Ave Maria University theology graduate, and she has a fascinating take on how fashion can reach a whole new level through faith!
Below is Harper's interview with Emily Chaffins, a freelance writer for the Florida Catholic and curator of the "Through the Catholic Lens" blog.
Emily Chaffins: From a Catholic perspective, what do you think we can learn about God and ourselves from clothing?
Mary Harper: It's actually pretty amazing how, throughout both the Old Testament and the New Testament, clothing is mentioned over 100 times in Scripture. The majority of times, it's meant to be a sign of God's mercy and providence.
We know how clothing operates: it covers you, it protects you on just a practical level. Throughout different cultures, we know it communicates something both about your history and your personality.
In Genesis, Adam and Eve just try to cover themselves in some branches. That’s not comfortable at all, it’s very flimsy. What does God do? He literally slaughters an animal, the first sacrifice in Scripture. He covers them in leather garments because He wants them to have something that's worthy, something that’s good, something that’s actually going to protect them and be lasting.
God wants to cover us in robes of grace: the prodigal son comes home and the father puts a robe on him and a ring on him, as a reminder of his goodness and his dignity and his identity.
How interesting is it that even through something that we do every day – getting dressed for the day – the Lord is speaking His Providence over you. He desires to lavish you in grace. Even getting dressed in the morning is a way to remember putting on Christ, putting on your baptismal garment again, remembering who you are and who you're called to be in Christ.
Emily Chaffins: The secular world can portray the fact that Christians value dressing modestly as ridiculous and even oppressive. What would be your response? What is modesty really about?
Mary Harper: Whether I intend it or not, my clothing is going to communicate something. You wear a school uniform, it tells you what school you go to; priests put on vestments that tell you about the liturgical season. Well, there's great power in that. I have the capacity to communicate the Gospel through my very garments, through intentionality, creativity, and beauty.
I don't really get into modesty rules because I think that conversation needs to happen one-on-one with a person. There's a reason why, in canon law and the catechism, no one's giving you cut-and-dried rules, because culture has to be taken into consideration.
The question is, am I wearing something that allows me to be fully present to the people before me? Or am I stressed about, “Am I wearing the right thing? Do I need to fix this? Does this fit me well?” If my thoughts are so consumed with how I'm looking and how I'm feeling for the five hours I’m at this party, then wear something different!
If you're going hiking with friends and you don't wear the proper footwear – you wear flip flops in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado – well, there's a high chance you're not going to be able to finish the trail with your friends. It is my responsibility to wear something that makes sense for the activity at hand, for the environment that I'm in, and that allows me to be fully present. That’s a service to everyone around me and to myself.
You can go to two extremes. One extreme is, I can wear whatever I want, I don't care what anyone else thinks about it. At the same time, we don't want to get to the point of, “I don't know how to dress myself well, and I'm so scared of doing the wrong thing, so I’m going to make sure my fingernails and my ears and my ankles are covered: nothing can show because my body is bad.”
No, no, the Church has never said that. You can read all about it in John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, about the goodness of the body.
So, what is it that I want to communicate through what I'm wearing?
Emily Chaffins: You’ve mentioned before, “Clothing can communicate the heart and the self.” Do you have any recommendations for how to do that in a more intentional way with how you develop your own fashion sense?
Mary Harper: I love the fact that, through our history and the beauty of everything that's given to us in the Catholic Church, even the secular world is mesmerized by this “Catholic aesthetic.” Beauty always points to truth and goodness. There’s a reason why people who aren’t Christian wander into churches in Italy.
I love looking to the saints for style inspiration. If you are in a rut and you don't know what to do, you can look at some of their stories.
As an example, St. Teresa de Jesús de los Andes was always so enamored of everything beautiful in the world: the ocean, riding horses. She was so normal, so beautiful. Before she had this “come to Jesus moment” when she was a kid going to receive First Communion, she was super vain, prideful, and mean. But then she realized, “I'm going to receive Jesus and that literally means He comes to my heart.” She asked everyone for forgiveness and became this changed young woman. She eventually became a Carmelite.
Okay, so I’m not telling you to go around wearing a Carmelite habit – please don’t do that! But she loved riding horses, so if you have Western boots, you can say you're wearing them in honor of St. Teresa. Or you could wear silk, reflecting her conversion at her First Communion because her dress was made of silk. Even when you wear jeans, you can think of her, because she just loved to be this great adventurer and going into the mountains. It can be as simple as this: I really need some inspiration today, so I’m going to wear my jeans and I'm going to ask St. Teresa to pray for me, and that's going to remind me of her today.
Or St. John the Baptist: he's mentioned wearing a leather belt and his camel hair, and he's this wild man – I think he's the original Florida man! So if you have any cute clothing with seashells, those are always connected to him in sacred art because it represents the beginning of the pilgrimage we make through baptism.
I think sometimes we can get so caught up saying, “If I’m a ‘real Catholic,’ then I'm going to dress in this particular way.” I think it's really easy to get kind of scrupulous when it comes to clothing, and so I think at the end of the day, bring it to the Lord and have conversations with people who know you. If you have any concern about, “Am I dressing in a way that is good?”, talk to someone who knows your heart.
And just have fun with it! The Holy Spirit is creative. When you get dressed for the day, if you just say, “Come Holy Spirit,” He’s going to show up. It’s going to be awesome and joyful, and it'll be more fun. People who get frozen because it's overwhelming, or there's so much pressure, invite the Holy Spirit into it and He will change it.
