George D. Munsing (1858-1921) of New York was quite the tinkerer. He developed what may have been the world’s first riding lawnmower. He invented a process for extracting fibers from pineapple leaves and machine-knitting them into fabric, an industry that never took off but which was looked on for a time as the next coming thing for the pineapple growers of Florida.

Whatever the merits of his other ideas, Munsing found his biggest success in the late 1880s with the invention of a knitting machine that combined wool and silk in a new way. Wool is warm but scratchy. Silk is smooth but doesn’t retain body heat. Munsing invented a process to knit wool so that the fabric was coated on both sides with a layer of silk. Voila – fabric that was warm enough for winter wear, yet soft enough against the skin that your long underwear didn’t cause a constant itch. The combination was also uncommonly elastic, so that clothes fit the body more snugly than had been possible with earlier materials.

Munsing and some partners opened the Northwestern Knitting Company in Minneapolis. He was far more interested in the technology than in managing a business, so the company struggled, but survived. Munsing left the company after a while, then returned in 1919 to lead research and development – at which point Northwestern Knitting was renamed the Munsingwear Corporation. By the time of Munsing’s death in 1921, the company’s multiple factories were churning out tens of thousands of “union suits” per day.

You know where I’m going with this. Hold on to that thought, and we’ll get back to it.

In the first half of the 20th century, before there was a Handbook compiling decisions and instructions from Church leaders, those leaders struggled with ways to inform local leaders and members of decisions on questions that had been brought to the leading quorums. Some matters, but not all, could be published in the Deseret News or the Church’s magazines. Other matters were circulated to local leaders by means of letters sent to stake and mission and temple presidents, bishops and branch presidents, and/or quorum and auxiliary leaders, as appropriate. Those local leaders would then know how to counsel members and direct local affairs.

That system was fine … as long as you, as a local leader, actually got the letter. But if you were called as a bishop or mission president a few months after a circular letter went out, you might never see it – maybe it was handed to you with the files of your new office, or maybe it stayed in the papers of the outgoing officer. I always have to keep this flaw in the system in mind when I read questions asked by local leaders – those local leaders sometimes appear astonishingly ill-informed from my perspective, but then I remember that they may not have gotten the word due to systemic flaws.

Okay, that’s another thread. Hang on to that thought, too.

Until sometime in the 1930s (I don’t have the exact date at my fingertips this morning), the Church did not manufacture its own temple garments. Members made them at home, or, as became most common at least by the turn of the 20th century, members purchased commercially-made clothing and marked them appropriately to serve their purpose. That meant that although certain details of pattern had to be met, there could also be a great variation in other details.

The Mormon market must have been a significant one for the western underwear business, because numerous companies, some controlled by non-Mormons, competed for patronage by producing clothing with new fabrics and in new styles … some of which did not always conform very closely to what was actually approved by the Church. To combat that difficulty, the Church produced machine-embroidered tags noting that a garment met the necessary requirements, which commercial manufacturers could sew into their products if they agreed to certain details of construction and to respectful advertising.

Trouble was, it didn’t take long for manufacturers to create their own unauthorized “approved style” tags, and even to sew legitimate “approved style” tags into very unorthodox clothing in violation of their agreements. The tags soon lost all meaning and were abandoned by the mid-1920s, and then revived with tighter control in 1938.

There’s your third thread, and here’s your fourth. Those threads will start coming together now.

In 1923, the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve approved some modifications to what had been the standard temple garment: sleeves were shortened to the elbow; legs were shortened to just below the knee; buttons were used in place of the string ties used earlier, and so on. Much as today a one-piece garment coexists with the more common two-piece garment, the old and new styles were both acceptable after 1923.

The Church didn’t make a general, public announcement of the 1923 changes, but circulated one of those letters to stake and temple presidents. “After careful and prayerful consideration it was unanimously decided that the following modifications may be permitted, and a garment of the following style be worn by those Church members who wish to adopt it … It may be observed that no fixed pattern of the temple garment has ever been given … It is the mind of the First Presidency and Council of Twelve that this modified garment may be used by those who desire to adopt it … those using either [old or new style] will not be out of harmony with the order of the Church … Will you kindly advise the Bishops of your Stake of these changes.”

Maybe bishops got the word, maybe they didn’t. Maybe rank and file members got the word, and maybe they didn’t. Many people undoubtedly continued buying and marking the clothing they were familiar with, without knowing any change had been allowed. Others probably spread the word among their friends very rapidly, especially among the young, because the new style of garment was much more compatible with current fashions than the older one.

Back to George D. Munsing and his wool-and-silk union suits.

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You can tell from these images from sales catalogs of the 1920s that Munsingwear was very compatible with Mormon requirements, including the new style of 1923. Mormons were as interested as anyone else in comfort, and Munsingwear apparently became quite popular, especially among the young. Newlyweds bought them. Missionaries carried them out to their mission fields.

Not everybody had got the word, though – in addition to the problems of new leaders not receiving the letters of instruction sent to the men they replaced, that 1923 circular had specifically requested that stake presidents “give the matter no unnecessary publicity.”

I’m aware of one mission president – and there were undoubtedly others – who became alarmed when, in 1928, he discovered that his elders were using Munsingwear for garments. He checked the garments for “approved style” tags. There were none – not only had he not received word of the new style approved five years earlier, he had not received word of the discontinuance of the ineffective tags.

He surveyed all the elders in his mission, asking who wore them and where they had gotten the idea that those short garments with their buttons and other newfangled details were acceptable? The responses came back – many elders were wearing them, and their parents had told them they were acceptable. He disagreed, and instructed his elders to have their parents ship them new – er, old – garments. They protested – not only were they certain that their garments were approved, they were reluctant to add this expense to their parents’ troubles, and to pay the 40% duty imposed on clothing imports in the country where they were serving. The president had a minor revolt on his hands, so he wrote to Salt Lake to ask for clarification.

Back came word spelling out the acceptable modifications to the garment. As long as the styles chosen by the elders met those requirements, Munsingwear was perfectly acceptable. Enlightened, the mission president informed his elders of what he had learned.

I think that brings all of our threads together.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. The outside world brings innovations to Mormonism, and the innovations that truly matter are carefully considered before adoption. Countless incidents like this one of the uninformed mission president help to explain why the Church Handbook of Instructions came into being. As public fashions changed, the Church had to begin manufacturing its own garments – the unacceptable alternative was to abandon them altogether; one of the Munsingwear styles pictured in this 1944 ad was certainly unacceptable, for instance.

And my goodness – even that “Authorized Pattern” tag sewn into the seam of your own garment has a history.

Thank you again for your tactfully worded comments.