In God We Dress

A list flashed on the screen to help translate Anthony. Two of the rules: "There's no such thing as overdressed" and "Accessorize, Accessorize, Accessorize."

She took the perky hosts through the list, but really, Baldwin was talking to Kansas City. This was part of the Baldwins' and Flumiani's apparel-awareness movement — the first step in selling West Coast and New York City ideas of fashion to a city where jeans are widely acceptable at high-end restaurants.

They have invested heavily in the idea. Emily and Matt Baldwin moved to Kansas City in 2003 to open the Standard in Johnson County's Town Center Plaza, smack-dab in the center of corporate khaki land. The shop caters to independent labels such as vintage-shirt maker Rebel Yell and denim maker True Religion Brand Jeans, which have become the lounge uniform for the likes of Paris Hilton and Ashton Kutcher. Their store — which shares shopping space with Express, Gap and Banana Republic — hawks outfits that cost as much as an entire sales rack at the chains.

Opening the store has been a homecoming for the couple. Matt Baldwin grew up in Wichita, and Emily in Springfield, Missouri. They met in the late '90s when both were camp counselors at the Christian Kanakuk Kamp in the Ozarks. In 2000, Matt earned an apparel manufacturing degree from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles and later got a job as an assistant designer at snowboard-apparel giant Volcom. There, the Baldwins met Flumiani, who was fronting Jedidiah at a fashion show.

Immediately, Flumiani and the Baldwins realized that they shared something unique: the belief that Christian values could meld with fashion. Flumiani had been working on the concept for years.

Flumiani had started his company after ditching a top-tier job with his father's commercial real estate development firm north of San Francisco. "At first, you're flying high, you're like, Yeah, what up?" he says. But the button-down business culture was strangling him. He strapped his surfboard to the top of his 1967 VW van and drove south, past places where, he says, he "wasn't feeling it." He ended up in San Diego.

He camped by the beach for three months. An epiphany hit when he read a self-improvement book titled Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Quaker writer Parker J. Palmer. "The thesis of this book is that we were all created for something, if you know what I mean," Flumiani says. He decided that he had been created to, well, create. "It wasn't like, My gosh it would be cool to be in the fashion industry. It wasn't the hype of it. How I got into it was by figuring out who I was and then deciding I was going to do it, no matter what people said, because I wanted to be free."

He picked the name Jedidiah, a Hebrew name that means loved by the Lord, after learning it at Bible study. "I'd been asking myself a lot of questions about God and my own faith and about what other people believe and why they believe it," he says. He marketed the brand as beach-inspired, but he trimmed back the usual "baggy and lame" skater fit for tops and jeans. The company's slogan: "Become who you are."

By 2001, Flumiani had made a production deal with a California screen-printing business. After their meeting, Matt Baldwin joined Flumiani as a sales rep, trying to get the brand placed in surf shops and top-shelf boutiques. "Jedidiah was set out to promote thinking and promote a positive image in an industry that doesn't have a lot of morals at times," Baldwin says.

Two years ago, the Baldwins thought it was time to bring what they'd learned out West back home. They leased space at Town Center and started cataloging inventory in the basement of Matt's parents' house in Wichita. Flumiani traveled there from San Diego a few times to help tag product and figure out store designs. Eventually, he became convinced that a high-end clothing store could make it in Kansas City.

"I didn't get into this business to sling clothes," Flumiani says about leaving the booming Jedidiah. His label had become so popular at mainstream boutiques that he was declining to sell it in Christian bookshops. "I got into it for the movement and for the art," he says. "It wasn't about money, and it wasn't about stores."

Now Flumiani splits time between KC and Los Angeles, where he recently established a design studio to launch the Standard's new brand, primarily a men's line. Flumiani says that even though the label has what he calls spiritual undertones, it will not cater to Christian stereotypes. "It's not going to be, 'Stop killing babies' or 'You're going to hell.' That's not who we are," he says. His last brand was supposed to be secular, too.

Jedidiah, Flumiani's previous brand, still sells at the Saltmine, a Christian lifestyle shop in Overland Park and Independence Center. The store looks like a chic skate shop, except that the shelves are stocked with clothing, compact discs and books championing religion as a trendy self-esteem builder.