Although clothing was one of the most debated and contested issues in early Republican Turkey, direct state intervention to people’s clothing through legislation was in fact very limited. Together with the Hat of Law of 1925, the Law Prohibiting the Wearing of Certain Garments, usually referred as the Dress Law of 1934, composed the legal framework of the dress change the Kemalist regime attempted to achieve. With the consolidation of the authoritarian single-party regime in the 1930s, a series of changes was introduced especially targeting cultural and social modernization. The Dress Law of 1934 was a part of this wave of reforms through which visual expressions of modernity, such as clothing, gained a particular significance reflecting the “progress” brought about by the Kemalist regime. The law prohibited the wearing of religious attire by the clerics of all religions except in places of worship and during religious ceremonies. Members of the clergy were to adopt “modern” clothing outside of service, religious symbols and garment would be removed, and thus a new profile of Turkish citizen would be established in the public sphere. This requirement was defended as a requirement of the principle of secularism as well as a prerequisite for preserving equality among the citizens. This paper analyzes the debate regarding the Dress Law of 1934. It discusses how, in the context of this law, dress became an issue of modernity and European-style clothing was promoted as a signifier of a secular national identity. The paper also explores the ways in which this process coincided with, and in many ways served, the Kemalist project of homogenizing the public sphere and redrawing its boundaries as a uniform, irreligious and national space. Reactions coming from different religious communities, such as the Greek Orthodox Church, are also analyzed, with a particular emphasis on the ways the mid-level Muslim clerics responded to this change in the provinces. Thus, rather than the discourse adopted by the Kemalist regime, the implementation process of the law and different ways of adaptation to the imposed norms will be the main focus.