‘Super sad!’: An LDS Church-owned modest clothing shop is closing

In late September, the modest clothing brand Sweet Salt made its final social media post.

“From day one, Sweet Salt Clothing has celebrated modest, inclusive fashion that helps women feel confident and beautiful,” it read. “Thank you for embracing the vision and being part of the Sweet Salt family for these past 13 years.”

The brand encouraged customers to look out for closeout deals on its website, which would remain open through the end of the year, and in stores, which would be closing periodically. The comments were an outpouring of disappointment.

“You are pretty much the only place I can find dresses that work for me and my girls! We are super sad! We love the quality and beauty of your dresses as well as the hard to find sizes,” one woman commented, adding a crying emoji.

Sweet Salt was “the only place where I could find new modest dresses,” another wrote. “I may have to start sewing my own.”

“Why do all the modest clothing stores end up closing? (I know, dumb question),” another customer lamented. “It’s just SO FRUSTRATING!!!”

The Sweet Salt closure is complicated by the fact that the brand’s parent company — Deseret Book — is an arm of Deseret Management, a for-profit company associated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

And while the shuttering comes as modesty standards are shifting for Latter-day Saint members and as the church reports record-setting investment numbers, the question of why the beloved brand is closing remains something of a mystery.

The closure was initially announced in April, when Deseret Book said it planned to phase out the Seagull Book, a discount book chain and parent company of Sweet Salt.

“In 2006, Deseret Book welcomed Seagull into our family, and we have worked side by side since that time,” Deseret Book president Laurel Day told the church-owned publication Deseret News at the time. “However, the business model is no longer filling the needs it once did as times and customer behaviors have changed. After extensive analysis and deep consideration, we have made the difficult decision to phase out our Seagull brands over the coming year.”

As part of the closure, the Deseret News reported, Deseret Book would also “dissolve the development of Sweet Salt Clothing,” though Day offered no specific comment on why Sweet Salt, too, was set to shutter.

The origins of Sweet Salt — and the reason the dress shop was affiliated with the bookstore — also are a bit of a mystery. Its website says it was created by “a team of women” on a mission to “make women feel confident and beautiful with modest and fashionable clothes.” But unlike many companies in the social media age, the women who apparently founded it are not named in that history, and never appear in its social media posts or on its site.

Sweet Salt directed inquiries about its founding and its closing to Deseret Book, which did not respond to repeated requests for an interview or comment. Neither Deseret Management, which oversees Deseret Book, nor a spokesperson for the church responded to the same request.

Tariff trouble?

On April 2, Trump announced major tariffs on imports from countries around the world in a move he called “Liberation Day.” Among them was the imposition of a 54% tariff on all goods imported from China, as well as significant tariffs on Vietnamese imports.

Tags on several pieces of clothing at Sweet Salt’s Cottonwood Heights store show that the items were made in China and Vietnam, and the announcement of the closure came only three weeks after Trump’s “Liberation Day.”

And as The Salt Lake Tribune reported in May, Trump’s floating of tariffs in the early months of the year cost the church billions, as the president’s comments put the markets in turmoil and the church’s investment fund lost nearly $4 billion in value.

By August, however, the church’s fund set a new record high — one broken only by the most recent numbers revealed in November filings.

The church has also moved over time to consolidate some of its for-profit enterprises. In 2009, they shuttered Beneficial Financial, a life insurance company the church had operated for more than 100 years. And in recent years, Deseret Book has shifted to more of a Barnes and Noble-esque lifestyle brand, selling not just books, but also accessories, t-shirts, some LDS temple clothing and home goods, among other wares.

And last month, the church unveiled new sleeveless garments for its members, a marked shift in modesty standards. Although a representative for Sweet Salt said in an email, “As far as I know, it has nothing to do with the new sleeveless garments.”

The church also did not respond to questions about whether the closure was potentially related to tariffs.

‘Amazon has a lot of things’

The shopping habits of LDS women have been undeniably changing in recent years, said Rebbie Brassfield, the host of the “Mormons in Media” podcast.

“I think so much of it is generational,” Brassfield said during a recent interview. “It feels like a shift from a letter of the law to a spirit of the law philosophy, and that’s interesting to watch.”

Brassfield feels that shift has been largely driven by social media. She, and many other LDS women she knows, Brassfield said, enjoy following fashion influencers who offer modest outfit ideas with clothes from major brands like Zara and H&M — which don’t explicitly produce modest clothing.

“I struggle with wanting to be in the world maybe more than I’m supposed to,” she said. “I just want to shop at a normal store.”

“I’m prideful,” she added with a laugh. “I don’t want to buy my clothes where I buy my scriptures.”

And yet, she said, the closure of Sweet Salt does make her sad, because it is still difficult to find clothes that work with garments, and a brand like Sweet Salt was certainly filling a niche for LDS women.

At the Cottonwood Heights store last week, Veronica Widemann, a longtime fan of Sweet Salt, was sifting through blouses. It’s “so sad” to see them closing, she said.

“It’s the best,” she said. “It’s fashion, and at the same time it’s very modest and classic.”

Widemann said she particularly appreciated that Sweet Salt offered a range of sizes, which she said can be hard to find.

Angela Toone, another Utahn who was shopping, said Sweet Salt is not the first modest clothing brand she’s seen go out of business. But part of the reason for Sweet Salt’s closure, she suggested, is perhaps that modest, affordable clothing is actually fairly accessible for many shoppers.

“I feel like I can find things,” she said. “Amazon has a lot of things.”