The Marilyke Look

Some of Manhattan's department stores and some of suburban New Jersey's dress shops were getting used to a new kind of invasion last week. Potential customers enter, inspect the dresses and select the models worthy to bear a tag proclaiming them fit for a Roman Catholic girl.

Each tag, for which startled retailers are charged 3-c-, "to cover the cost of shipping and mailing.'' is illustrated with a picture of the Virgin Mary, the trade name "Marilyke" and the motto, "Whatever our Blessed Mother approves." It also bears a list of specifications for Marilyke dresses, among them: "Full coverage for the bodice, chest, shoulders, back and arms," no cutouts lower than two inches below the neckline, no transparent or flesh-colored materials to give the impression of nudity, sleeves halfway between shoulder and elbow, nothing that will "unduly reveal the figure of the wearer."

Labels also bear the legend "Copyright by Rev. B. Kunkel." The Rev. Bernard A. Kunkel of Bartelso, Ill. (pop. 304) started a "crusade" for maidenly modesty in 1944. founded an organization called the Purity Crusaders of Mary Immaculate. In 1953 he began the Marilyke tag idea, and the movement has been growing ever since. "Close to 75,000 dresses have been tagged since we started," he said last week. In addition, a factory in Bartelso now manufactures Marilyke clothes. Units of the Purity Crusaders have been formed all over the U.S. as well as in Canada, Hawaii, the Philippines and India.

Latest crusader for the Marilyke look is the Rev. Charles Varga, 27, pastor of St. John the Apostle Church in Linden, N.J. No retailer in Father Varga's parish has so far turned the tagging committee away, though many have managed to keep their enthusiasm within bounds. "Of course we let them tag the dresses," said one Linden shopkeeper. "What are we going to do -- commit business suicide? This is a 65% Catholic community." But one buyer in a large Manhattan department store declared that "some of [the Marilyke dresses] are so cute we've put them in the Junior Department." Marilyke crusaders concentrate on evening dresses and bridal gowns; swimming suits are too unforeseeable -- the same bathing suit might be acceptable on one girl and immodest on another girl several sizes larger. The big manufacturers, Fa ther Kunkel admits, are the long-range goal. "Going to the retailer," he explained, "is an attempt to create a demand." All Manila buzzed this week over a ban posted in every Roman Catholic girls' school against accepting any student who studies ballet. The reason: the scanty costumes (leotard and tutu) used by ballet dancers and the "extraordinary positions," as one nun put it, assumed in mixed company.

The new ruling, decided at a meeting of the Association of Mothers Superior of Manila's Roman Catholic girls' schools, struck a blow that might be mortal to the Philippines' growing interest in the ballet.

Before World War II, only about 300 girls in Manila studied ballet, but during the postwar years, the visits of topnotch foreign dancers--Alicia Markova, Alexandra Danilova, Frederic Franklin et al.--have upped enrollment in ballet schools to approximately 2,000.

"We cannot believe it," editorialized Manila's Evening News. "This is a prohibition without parallel in our times . . . Ballet is one of the great arts . . . Catholic governments have encouraged and even financially supported it for centuries. It is astounding to find that we must argue such a point in our day and age."

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