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FeedMeet the Yummies—The Young Urban Mormons
Think you know the face of the LDS Church? Think again.
If you’ve lived in Utah for any period of time, you have an idea of what a typical Latter-day Saint looks like. All of us—Mormon and non-Mormon alike—can easily envision someone who embodies Brigham Young University’s honor code, the stricture that dictates grooming standards for the school’s student body—the de facto uniform of Mormonism.
For men and women alike, the code emphasizes modesty: no form-fitting clothing, no hems above the knee. Nothing sleeveless. Hairstyles are conservative—no ponytails or hair beyond the ears for men. Mustaches—if worn at all—may not extend beyond the corners of the mouth; beards are verboten; tattooing is discouraged.
Off-campus, most LDS faithful stay within the lines of the honor code, and they’re beautiful in their commitment to their faith and its standards. But it’s clear that the uniform of Mormonism wasn’t cooked up on Fifth Avenue. Because, although it’s tasteful and timeless, high-style it ain’t.
Lately, as youth is wont to do, some young Mormons are pushing the edges of convention. Walk the bright streetway at The Gateway or spend an afternoon in Liberty Park, and even native Utahns, with their well-trained eyes, might have difficulty distinguishing Mormon from Non. Something’s changed—maybe it’s the gentiles, maybe it’s the faithful—but it’s getting harder to tell who’s who.
One group in particular leads the charge. They’re young, mainly in their 20s. They’re building careers that unleash their creative passions, whether it’s photography, music or fashion. They’d be at home in L.A. or New York, but they choose to settle here, in Salt Lake City and Provo. They’re faithful, accepted in their ward houses, and go easily from the ice cream social to the “mocktail” party, from Family Home Evening to Kilby Court.
They’re Young Urban Mormons, or, as we’ve dubbed them, the Yummies. They’re going against the grain and challenging stereotypes—the fresh face of a young religion. Whether or not they’ll change the world—or the Wasatch Front—is up for debate. But they just might change the way you envision Mormons.
Rebecca Vernon
32, single
technical writer/musician
myspace.com/subrosatheatre
Rebecca Vernon, a 32-year-old technical writer for 3M, started developing her musical tastes in middle school. “My first album was Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction. I was really different. Everyone else was into New Kids on the Block.”
Vernon has always loved music, so it seems natural that she’s now a member
of two Salt Lake City-based bands—Subrosa and Violet Run. Her musical taste is uncommon, especially for a young LDS woman who moved to Provo at age 18
to attend BYU.
“My favorite genre of music is stoner rock,” she says. “It’s sort of dirgey, and whenever I hear it, I feel this joy. It’s really epic and moving, and I just love it.”
It’s a strange preference for a young Mormon, and Vernon knows it, but that doesn’t stop her from pursuing her dreams. Whereas many of her cohorts are married with children, Vernon’s chasing a different goal. “Everything I ever wanted was to be signed to a small European label and touring Europe,” she says. “If I can do that, I’ll die happy.” She’s well on her way—Subrosa recently signed with a Swedish label called, “I Hate Records.”
The city’s rock scene is a far cry from the pews of its ward houses, but Vernon loves both. “I hang out in smoky bars and clubs, and I don’t think twice about it,” she says. She attends church every Sunday and abides by the faith’s Word of Wisdom, which prohibits alcohol, cigarettes and premarital sex, among other no-nos.
Sex and drugs may be out of the picture for this young Mormon, but at least Vernon can fall back on rock ’n’ roll.
Hayley Parker
22, married, fashion designer
hplovecraftnyc.com
In these days of American Idol and Project Runway, when it seems like everyone’s desperate for fame, Hayley Parker is a quiet anomaly. She’s newly married and she likes to draw. Until recently, she taught art in a Provo school. But the soft-spoken Alpine native produces an outrageously chic line of shoes under the label H.P. Lovecraft.
If you haven’t heard of it, you obviously aren’t on fashion’s cutting edge, because Madonna, Guillermo del Toro and Julian Casablancas of The Strokes have all discovered Parker’s line of hand-embellished canvas footwear. Elle and Nylon magazines have both featured her work, and each pair can fetch hundreds of dollars.
In her low-key way, Parker explains how it happened: “It was kind of a hobby that exploded. I did a pair for myself three years ago, in my first year [at New York City’s Fashion Institute of Technology]. Then my friends wanted them and their brothers wanted them, and on a whim, I e-mailed some boutiques in New York and this store—Patricia Fields’s Hotel Venus—picked up a bunch of them, and it just kept going. Now they sell in New York, Paris and Italy.”
During a trip to Paris, Parker stopped by a boutique that carried her shoes, just to see them on the shelf. “I was too embarrassed to tell them [I’m the designer],” she says. “But I asked them, ‘Do you carry H.P. Lovecraft?’ And the guy was like, ‘Of course! But they’re sold out! We love them!’ So it was pretty cool, and they were selling for so much money, too—like, 500 Euros—so it was kind of ridiculous.”
When someone points out that creating high-style shoes is a far cry from scrapbooking, the conventional artistic outlet for modern LDS wives and mothers, Parker laughs. “The funny thing is, I’m at Roberts every day buying fabric markers. I’m the same kind of customer—just doing different things with it.”
Andrew Glassett
29, single, managing editor
for SLUG Magazine
slugmag.com
One of the first things you notice about Andrew Glassett is his beard. It’s long. Lush. It hearkens to his bewhiskered Mormon forebears. Which is kind of funny, given the dearth of hirsute faces in the modern ward house. Glassett sticks out a bit, but he’s OK with it.
“It’s been kind of a struggle through the years, just because I’ve always been different,” he says. “But at the ward I go to now, it’s amazing how accepting they are.”
Raised in Jerome, Idaho—“There were about 6,000 people in the city and about 50,000 cows”—Glassett grew up in a conventional LDS family: a pharmacist father, a homemaker mom and seven children.
As happens in many LDS families, every child in the Glassett clan had to take music lessons. One of his sisters teaches violin; another is getting her doctorate in music composition. But Glassett expresses his musical heritage in a different, edgier way, playing in three different bands—Uzi &
Ari, Taughtme and Nolens Volens—spanning genres from alt-rock to electronica.
His music isn’t the only thing that’s different between Glassett and his family. So is the reason he goes to church and follows the LDS faith’s Word of Wisdom.
“I hold a temple recommend, a current one,” he says, “but I’m scientific, and that’s not how the church works. It’s about praying and receiving an answer. My logical brain can’t understand that, but the culture is very important to me. It’s the only way that I connect with my family, and I really care about them, so that’s why the church is still an important part of my life.”
Nicole Hill
23, single, photographer
nicolehill.blogspot.com
When she was 14, Nicole Hill got a business license to sell her handmade jewelry to Provo boutiques. Before that, she sold snowcones on a neighborhood street corner. She graduated early from high school to study photography at the prestigious Brooks Institute, and took a break to earn a culinary degree at the French Culinary Institute in New York City. All this before she was 22.
Hill, a tiny, wiry brunette, is what Martha Stewart would be like if she had been born LDS in Provo. “I like to be in charge,” she says, shrugging her shoulders.
Wielding the unlikely combination of a camera and a culinary degree, Hill has Utah County cupped in her small palm. In addition to her day job at a stock photography firm, she teaches photography classes in her home; her blog, nicolehill.blogspot.com, receives 30,000 visits a month; and she’s planning to self-publish a cookbook of original recipes.
It all fits neatly into Hill’s plan: “When I was in seventh grade,
I picked this profession because I wanted a ‘mommy’ profession, where I can pick up or turn down as many jobs as I want to. Of course, I have to be successful to do it,” she says. “That’s what I’m working on now, so that I can always have work when I need it.”
“I guess I’m not the typical go-to-BYU-and-get-married sort,” Hill continues. “My sister has done the same thing: she’s followed her career. Not to prevent [family and home life], but we’re doing our thing until that comes along, and we’re not going to sit around waiting for it.
Maht Paulos
24, married, shop owner/musician/
arts promoter
coalumbrella.com
Maht Paulos, the co-owner of Coal Umbrella, a downtown Provo boutique, grew up being different from most of his peers in the Utah Valley city. “My outlook and my style of dress, my hair length, superficial things like that, really set me and my friends apart [from the other kids]. We weren’t doing it just for the sake of being different, it was just what we wanted to do—to dress with a more fitted look and different hair.”
Keep in mind, Paulos was wearing skinny jeans, long hair and a beard during the late 1990s, when “relaxed fit” was as tight as men’s jeans got. On top of that, he lived in Utah Valley, where clean-cut BYU students make nearly every hangout look as fresh and innocent as an old-fashioned soda fountain.
But Paulos and his friends were into music—Paulos is a drummer in a band called Mathematics, Et Cetera—visual art, fashion and independent cinema, and they weren’t deterred by Provo’s reputation as a sleepy Mormon town.
“People constantly call it a bubble—‘There’s nothing to do in Provo’—but what’s weird is most of these people haven’t stepped out and tried to find what was interesting, what was going on.
“I’ve always had the philosophy that you can create whatever is lacking, if you really want it.”
So that’s what he’s done. With the help of his wife, Liz Lightfoot, Paulos opened Coal Umbrella, a hip vintage- and repurposed-clothing boutique in downtown Provo. (A good source for Western snap-front shirts, local art and vintage sheath dresses.)
His next project is the Sego Arts Foundation, a collaboration with local artists (several of whom also own businesses in downtown) to celebrate the area’s fine arts scene. “We want to bring in an independent arts cinema and we want to start a radio station, because there’s just a lot of things a cool college town with a thriving art scene needs but Provo doesn’t have.”
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