LDS Church spotlights NYC designer Pono Skousen, whose own LGBTQ+ brand tells a different kind of story
The official Instagram and Facebook accounts of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shared a feature on Pono Skousen, a Hawaiʻi-born, Parsons-trained fashion designer who served a mission in Salt Lake City and Brazil, and is now working in New York City. The post is part of the Church’s ongoing series highlighting members’ creative lives, and Skousen’s story — of leaving ballet behind, learning to sew from Relief Society sisters, and landing at New York Fashion Week — is a warm one, told in his own words.
The Church’s post ran Skousen’s story as a first-person reflection:
“I am Pono. I am from Hawaiʻi, grew up military, and moved a lot. I came to New York about five years ago to study fashion at Parsons and just graduated. Now I design womenswear for a brand that we show at New York Fashion Week, which still feels unreal in the best way.
“I actually started as a ballet dancer, but when my family moved to a small town, I chose to go with them instead of pursuing ballet somewhere else. I missed creating, so I learned to sew with Relief Society sisters at church. That turned into a portfolio, then fashion school, and now a career.
“A lot of my inspiration comes from the women in my life. My mom held our family together through deployments. Relief Society sisters taught me to sew. My sister is here in New York now, too, chasing her own dreams. I love designing for women and helping them feel strong, confident, and true to who they are. There is a real spiritual power in femininity.
“Faith has always been part of my life, and it shows up in my work in quiet ways. I love exploring identity, spirituality, and purpose through clothing. Clothes can tell stories. They can carry light.
“There were times in fashion school when I felt different from everyone around me, but I learned I do not have to choose between being creative and being a disciple of Jesus Christ. Both shape me. Both matter.
“I just want to create things that honor where I come from and help people feel seen and powerful.” — Pono
It’s a story about a devout upbringing translating into a fashion career, the kind of profile the Church has increasingly used to show that Latter-day Saints can be found in creative, urban, unexpected spaces.
What the post doesn’t get into is that Skousen, who is openly gay, has spent the past couple of years building something else alongside his day-job design work: Church of Martin, a fashion label and online community he co-founded with fellow designer and stylist Charles Robertson. The name comes from Robertson’s middle name and childhood nickname. The two started the project, by their own account, “super unseriously,” as a joke between friends that grew into a real brand with a real following.
Church of Martin speaks directly to LGBTQ+ people who grew up, or are still growing up, inside Latter-day Saint culture, including current members, questioning members, and those who’ve since left the Church. Rather than rejecting that upbringing outright, the brand plays with its language: bestsellers include a shirt reading “Currently Struggling With Same-Sex Attraction,” reclaiming a phrase many gay Latter-day Saints have heard used to describe themselves; a “Love One Another” design featuring two women embraced in a heart; an “I Love My Mormon Boy” tee; and pieces styled after historical Mormon pioneer dress, reworked through a queer lens. A June capsule collection leaned into Boy Scouts of America imagery, including a “Gay Scouts of America” hoodie and a branded handkerchief. The brand describes itself, tongue firmly in cheek, as “the brand that struggles with same-sex attraction.”
For a lot of queer people who grew up LDS, that kind of humor lands as something closer to relief than rebellion. It’s a way of holding on to a childhood vocabulary that once felt loaded and handing it back with warmth instead of shame. Robertson and Skousen have built a small but devoted community around exactly that feeling, one Instagram reel and Primary-song needle-drop at a time.
None of this contradicts what Skousen said in the Church’s post — his account of learning to sew, of faith shaping his creative life, of feeling different in fashion school but refusing to choose between “being creative and being a disciple of Jesus Christ,” reads as entirely sincere. It’s simply not the whole picture. Skousen is, at once, a designer the Church is proud to claim, and a gay man building a brand explicitly for people who’ve had a complicated relationship with that same institution.
Both truths belong to him. Whether the Church’s communications team knew the fuller context and chose to leave it out, or simply featured a talented member without digging further, isn’t publicly known. The Church hasn’t commented on the overlap. But for LGBTQ+ Latter-day Saints and former members who’ve spent years navigating exactly that dual identity — devout and queer, both at once, without a tidy resolution — Skousen’s story, in full, may be the more resonant one.
