Jinger Duggar Explains How Her Family’s Modest Dress Code Affected Photo Shoots for TLC

Jinger Vuolo (née Duggar) revealed that her family’s modest dress code affected their photo shoots for TLC when they starred on 19 Kids and Counting and Counting On.

“Getting everyone in something they wanted to wear was always a little challenging,” Jinger, 31, recalled during the Wednesday, January 22, episode of her and husband Jeremy Vuolo’s “The Jinger & Jeremy Podcast.”

She continued, “I was always a little nervous about that because I didn’t know what wardrobe they were going to choose. So that’s something where I was hesitant going into it.”

During her family’s time on TLC, Jim Bob Duggar, Michelle Duggar and their kids would pose for promotional photo shoots alongside other stars from the network’s shows including Little People, Big World, Sister Wives, 90 Day Fiancé and more.

The wardrobe team would provide clothing they picked out for the reality stars, and Jinger explained that they “would try to choose things they thought you would typically choose for yourself.”

As fans of the Duggar family know, Jim Bob, 59, and Michelle’s daughters were raised to dress modestly in skirts and dresses that showed off little to no skin.

“They had all of the very Duggar-style wardrobe. So it was more like Old Navy, probably even some Walmart clothes were in there, very chill, very streamline Duggar-style,” she reflected. “They had our whole wardrobe and then they’d have someone else’s on the side.”

While the wardrobe team came prepared with clothes, Jinger claimed that the size options of the clothing would vary. She then shared that one time she was given a dress that was “two sizes too big,” and it needed to be pinned in order to fit her properly.

According to the former reality star, the wardrobe team was given fact sheets for her and her family that included their clothing sizes. However, some of the stylists were not aware of the Duggars’ strict dress code. “A couple of them didn’t realize we didn’t wear pants,” she said, adding that they were never forced to wear something they didn’t feel comfortable in.

Despite the difficulty that surrounded her clothing at the photo shoots, Jinger fondly recalled the experiences and said she enjoyed getting to spend time with the other TLC stars.

“Most of the time we were separated, they tried to give you your own space so you wouldn’t run into other people,” she shared. “In hair and makeup or in wardrobe or when walking outside of your tent you could see people you knew.”

While Jinger and her sisters were raised not to wear pants, she has become more adventurous with her style and now includes the garment in her daily wardrobe.

She previously opened up about the dress code she was raised to follow in her and Jeremy’s 2021 memoir, The Hope We Hold. “My mom had always dressed us girls in skirts and dresses, a standard that was taken from Deuteronomy 22:5, which says, ‘A woman shall not wear a man’s garment,’” she wrote. “Modesty was a huge topic in our house, and we believed that wearing skirts instead of pants was a central part of being modest. But I wanted to discover for myself what the Bible had to say.”

Jinger said she eventually decided to start wearing pants after she examined certain passages in the Bible on her own. “Since Jeremy and I had begun studying Scripture together, I had become more aware of the different beliefs and doctrines Christians held,” she shared. “I realized that not everyone interpreted different passages of Scripture the way I always had, and I wanted to find out why.”