Secular culturistas continue to be fascinated by the Catholic Church—or at least by its external trappings. The Italian fashion design firm Dolce & Gabbana’s recent show in Rome for its men’s line, Alta Sartoria, was entirely devoted to riffs on Catholic clerical garments of the most sumptuous sort, heavy with brocade, gold-thread trim, and bejeweled crosses. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, the forty-year-old firm’s founders, used as their outdoor runway the most iconically Catholic site in Rome outside the walls of Vatican City: the Ponte Sant’Angelo leading across the Tiber from the Castel Sant’Angelo, originally the tomb of Emperor Hadrian, then a papal fortress, and now a museum. The bridge’s marble parapets feature magnificent Baroque statues of Sts. Peter and Paul, along with ten angels, each holding an instrument of Christ’s passion. It was one of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s last sculptural projects before his death in 1680.
To heighten the ecclesiastical atmospherics, Dolce & Gabbana hired a crew of extras from the Rome film studio Cinecittà, attired them in cardinal-red zucchetti and robes that were almost but not quite carbon copies of the attire of real-life cardinals, and stationed them along the parapets as a kind of honor guard for the models. The latter were the usual gaunt young male types who make their livings on fashion catwalks, except that most had been issued heavy-rimmed spectacles to give the impression they were taking a break from studying for final exams at the Gregorianum. Other extras wore surplices and carried thuribles, feathery flabella, and tasseled umbracula in a simulacrum of a Vatican procession, at least in someone’s feverish fantasy.
The effect was conclave-reminiscent: the conclave that recently elected Pope Leo XIV, as well as the 2024 film Conclave with its politically conniving prelates. In both movie and real life as captured by the media, masses of cardinals in their identical clerical attire and headwear had made for stunning photographic images, and Dolce & Gabbana were clearly trying for that effect.
As for the garments in the collection, their styles borrowed from Byzantine (ankle-length stoles) as well as Western (knockoffs of the wide sashes worn by popes and bishops) liturgical traditions. The results were both sublime and ridiculous. What real-life Catholic priest wears a jewel-encrusted clergy vest with no shirt on underneath? Or brings the last sacraments to the sick attired in a glittery gold dinner jacket and matching trousers? The intricately embroidered episcopal gloves seen on many of the models pretty much vanished from even the most solemn Catholic Masses after the Second Vatican Council. Magnificent copes—floor-length capes—are still common for certain Catholic ceremonies, although the capes don’t usually have armholes like the Dolce & Gabbana versions. Some of the stiff and heavily ornamented pseudo-vestments looked more like bathrobes, and others more like overcoats. The pectoral crosses were too big and too gem-overloaded, and the gold chains too many.
And yet—there was something spectacular about it all. Part of it was the meticulous craftsmanship that is a Dolce & Gabbana signature. The other was the fabrics themselves. Carefully chosen, with some undoubtedly woven and embellished to order, the textiles were exquisite, and there was also a kaleidoscopic variety of the shimmering satins, rich brocades, and luxurious velvets with their fringes, tassels, and encrustations of embroidery. The effect was genuinely beautiful in its fantastical way, and also touchingly sincere.
The show invites comparison to the 2018 Met Gala, where the theme was “Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” and celebrities adorned themselves with mishmashes of crosses, rosaries, angel wings, outsize bishops’ miters, headpieces depicting the Holy Family, and other combinations of the sacred and the silly. But the Dolce & Gabbana collection skirted this sort of caricature. The jeweled crosses on the models were nearly the only explicitly religious symbols on display, and the individual pieces of clothing didn’t appear to mock Catholic vestments so much as to simply pay homage to them. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana were both raised as Catholics, and although neither seems to have practiced his faith for decades, their collection evidenced a recognition of the power of Catholic tradition and even a certain reverence.
The show was yet another illustration of the paradox of the Catholic Church’s place in an aggressively secularized culture. Italy is a country saturated in traces of fervent Catholicism—historic churches housing precious works of art on nearly every streetcorner of its cities. Yet only 10 percent of Italians attend regular Sunday Mass, and there seems to be little sign of the revival of faith among young people observed elsewhere in Europe as well as America. To fashion designers, and to the superstars who attend events like the Met Gala, Catholicism is a shell, although a beautiful and enchanting shell. It is the most gorgeous of surfaces, with its art and music, its Dante and Bernini. Underneath, though, all seems hollow; the beauty doesn’t really mean anything.
Furthermore, the Catholic Church did itself a disservice when, after Vatican II, its leaders fostered the view that the most appealing aesthetic aspects of Catholicism interfered with the “noble simplicity” of rite that the Vatican II documents encouraged. The late Pope Francis didn’t help matters by mocking “grandma’s lace”—his term for the old-fashioned, heavily decorated liturgical vestments that used to be standard for Mass if parishes could afford them and that are exactly the sort of thing that inspired the Dolce & Gabbana collection. Like Renaissance polyphony in church music, the fancy items got pushed out, sometimes completely into the secular realm.
Still, all may not be lost. As superficial and over-the-top as the Dolce & Gabbana take on Catholic ritual and ceremony might have been in this summer’s display, it offers room for hope. As Joseph Ratzinger wrote several years before he became Pope Benedict XVI, the most effective demonstration of the truth of the Catholic faith “is on the one hand the saints and on the other the beauty that faith has generated.” Anyone admiring on video, say, one of the firm’s clerical-inspired dinner jackets can look past the garment and see very well those Bernini angels on the parapets holding the signs of the price Christ paid so we might have that faith. I can’t believe that Dolce and Gabbana, high priests of the secular world for so long, didn’t see some of it themselves.
Image by Thomas Wolf, licensed via Creative Commons. Image cropped.
