Fashion Theology

By Robert Covolo

What is fashion? Where does it come from? Why has it come to permeate modern life?

In the last half century, questions like these have drawn serious academic reflection, resulting in a new field of research—fashion studies—and generating a rich multidisciplinary discussion. Yet theology’s voice has been conspicuously absent in this conversation. The time has finally come for theology to break her silence and join this decades-long conversation.

Fashion Theology is the first of its kind: a serious and long-overdue account of the dynamic relationship between theology and fashion. Chronicling the epic journey from ancient Christian sources to current developments in fashion studies, cultural theologian Robert Covolo navigates the rich history of Christian thought as well as recent political, social, aesthetic, literary, and performance theory. Far from mere disparity or quick resolution, Covolo demonstrates that fashion and theology inhabit a mutual terrain that has, until recently, scarcely been imagined.

Covolo retraces the way theologians have taken up fashion across history, unveiling how Christian thinkers have been fascinated with fashion well before the academy’s current focus, and bringing these insights into the conversation with fashion itself: the logic by which fashion operates, how fashion shapes our world, and the way fashion imperceptibly molds our personal lives. Within fashion’s realms reside some of life’s greatest challenges: the foundations of political power, the basis for social order, the nature of aesthetics, how we inhabit time, and the means by which we tell stories about our lives—challenges, it turns out, that theologians also explore.

Fashion favors the bold; theology demands humility. Holding the two together,  Fashion Theology trailblazes an interdisciplinary path informed by a thoughtful engagement with the Christian witness. For those traversing this spectacle of unexpected crossroads and hotly contested terrain, the promise of fashion theology awaits with its myriad unexplored vistas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Release date: Aug 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781481312752

Book preview

Fashion Theology

Robert Covolo

Baylor University Press

© 2020 by Baylor University Press

Waco, Texas 76798

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of Baylor University Press.

Cover and book design by Kasey McBeath

Cover photograph: Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4813-1273-8

Mobi ISBN: 978-1-4813-1341-4

ePub ISBN: 978-1-4813-1275-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020937610

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To Chloe

pupilla oculi mei

la mode l’identité de l’époque

Yves Michaud

Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ

Paul

Contents

List of Images

Foreword—Ben Myers

Acknowledgments

Introduction

I. Fashion Theology as Tradition

+1. No Hairdos in Heaven

+2. Stealing from the Egyptians

+3. A Certain Savoir Faire

II. Fashion Theology as Reform

+1. An Unlikely Ally

+2. Not Those French!

+3. The King of Fashion

III. Fashion Theology as Public Discourse

+1. Top-Down or Bottom-Up

+2. Two Spaces Collude

+3. Micro, Mezzo, Macro

IV. Fashion Theology as Art

+1. You Call That Art?!

+2. Fashioning the Catholic Imagination

+3. Re/Forming the Art of Fashion

V. Fashion Theology as Everyday Drama

+1. Life in the New-Now

+2. The Stories We Wear

+3. A Fitting Performance

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

List of Images

1.1 Statue of priest of Serapis in a pallium, early second century. Louvre, Paris. Statue of Emperor Tiberius in a toga, first century. Louvre, Paris. Photos by Marie-Lan Nguyen. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sarapis_priest_Louvre_Ma1121.jpg; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tiberius_Capri_Louvre_Ma1248.jpg.

1.2 John VII, Portrait of Pope John VII, c. 705. Mosaic. Vatican, Rome. Photo distributed by the Yorck Project, DIRECTMEDIA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_VII#/media/File:Byzantinischer_Mosaizist_um_705_002.jpg.

1.3 Andrea di Bonaiuto (Andrea da Firenze) (fl. 1343–1377), Italian, The Triumph of Catholic Doctrine, personified in St. Thomas Aquinas, from the Spanish Chapel, c. 1365. Fresco. Photo © Raffaello Bencini / Bridgeman Images. Used with permission.

2.1 Giovanni di ser Giovannie Guidi, Cassone Adimari, c. 1450. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cassone_adimari.jpg.

2.2 Louis-Léopold Boilly, Portrait of a Sans-Culotte, 1792. Musée Carnavalet, Paris. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sans-culottes#/media/File:Sans-culotte.jpg.

2.3 Jacob Schlesinger, Portrait of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1825. Nationalgalerie, Berlin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel#/media/File:Hegel_by_Schlesinger.jpg.

3.1 Unknown artist, Interior of a London Coffeehouse, 1690–1700. Drawing. British Museum, London. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Interior_of_a_London_Coffee-house,_17th_century.JPG.

3.2 Hyacinthe Rigaud, Louis XIV of France, 1702. Louvre, Paris. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Louis_XIV_of_France.jpg.

3.3 Unknown photographer, The Young Abraham Kuyper, 1860. Historisch Documentatiecentrum voor het Nederlands Protestantisme, VU Amsterdam. Photo courtesy of Archivaris Collectie HDC Protestants Erfgoed. Used with permission.

4.1 Elsa Schiaparelli, Woman’s Dinner Dress, 1937. Designed in collaboration with Salvador Dali. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mme Elsa Schiaparelli, 1969, 1969-232-52. Used with permission.

4.2 Gianni Versace, Evening Dress, autumn/winter 1997–1998. Silver metal mesh, white silk tulle, embroidered clear crystals. Displayed at the Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination exhibit. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2018. Photo courtesy of Diane Worland. Used with permission.

4.3 Yves Saint Laurent, The Mondrian Collection, 1965. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Andy Warhol, The Souper Dress, 1966–1967. Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation, Nafplion, Greece. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mondrian_collection_of_Yves_Saint_Laurent#/media/File:Mondriaanmode_door_Yves_St_Laurent_(1966).jpg; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Souper_Dress,_American_paper_dress,_1967.jpg.

5.1 Unknown designer, Poodle Skirt & Matching Collar, 1950s. The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. Photo by Michelle Pemberton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poodle_skirt#/media/File:The_Childrens_Museum_of_Indianapolis_-_Poodle_skirt.jpg.

5.2 West Village, New York, 2009. Photo courtesy of Adam Sjoberg. Used with permission.

5.3 Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877. Art Institute of Chicago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Street;_Rainy_Day#/media/File:Gustave_Caillebotte_-_Paris_Street;_Rainy_Day_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg.

Foreword

The seventeenth-century Anglican poet George Herbert had an odd preoccupation with clothing. His work is filled with quirky and colorful wardrobe imagery. Prayer is described as heaven in ordinary, man well dressed (Prayer I). The church is where God gets dressed up (The Invitation). The incarnation happened when the Son of God undressed and came to earth to get a new suit of clothes (The Bag). Christ allowed his side to be opened by a spear so that he could turn his body into a handbag to carry our gifts and letters up to God (The Bag). His graveclothes were left behind so that we would have a handkerchief to dry our eyes when we are sad (The Dawning). And so on.

In a poem titled Giddiness, Herbert proposed a peculiar thought experiment. Imagine, he said, that our clothes were somehow organically linked to our souls, so that every change in our thoughts and desires would immediately be visible for all to see. What would life be like under such conditions? Herbert’s answer is probably right: all human relationships would totally collapse. It would be the end of civilization.

O what a sight were man if his attires

Did alter with his mind,

And, like a dolphin’s skin, his clothes combined

With his desires!

Surely if each one saw another’s heart,

There would be no commerce,

No sale or bargain pass: all would disperse

And live apart.

What Herbert playfully explores here is the double role of clothing. Clothes both reveal and conceal. Mercifully, our inner state is not fully communicated by the clothes we wear. Otherwise we would know too much about each other, and all bonds of trust would break down. But even if it does not fully reveal the inner life, clothing is not mere concealment either. Herbert saw a close relationship between the order of the soul and the way the soul expresses itself through the body. In his prose treatise The Country Parson (1652), he advised Christian ministers to dress simply and respectably, as if the neatness of a sanctified mind were perpetually breaking out and dilating itself even to [the] body, clothes, and habitation (The Country Parson, III). 

Herbert’s fascination with clothing is not unique in Christian history. As Robert Covolo demonstrates in this study, Christian thinkers have played a surprisingly important role in the history of theorizing about fashion—that is, the attempt to make sense of the meaning of the clothes we wear. Covolo’s is the first book-length account of the relation between theology and fashion. It is a study that draws together a wealth of detail from Christian history, the history of clothing, and contemporary fashion theory. Covolo shows that fashion theory—perhaps the most quintessentially modern of all scholarly fields—has a much longer and wider history than was previously recognized. The conversation about clothing, what it signifies, and why it matters has been taken up by theologians for many centuries.

After elaborating a history of theological engagements with clothing, Covolo turns to recent developments in fashion theory. He advances the discussion in new ways, exposing the curious and myriad ways in which fashion and theology intersect in the varied domains of public life, from politics and art to the everyday experience of time and the way we tell stories about our lives. What starts as a conversation about clothing morphs imperceptibly into some of the biggest questions about social order, aesthetics, theories of modernity and secularization, and the public performance of identity.

The result is an illuminating and often surprising investigation of one of the strangest and most characteristic habits of cultural life: the way we identify ourselves and others by the clothes we wear. George Herbert, to return to him once more, was already intrigued by this phenomenon:

Nothing wears clothes but man; nothing doth need

But he to wear them. (Providence)

Why do humans alone wear clothes? To what extent is the human endeavor to make sense of life bound up with fashion? What has Paris to do with Jerusalem? Robert Covolo’s book is an invitation to consider these questions anew as part of a centuries-long and multidisciplinary inquiry into what it means to be human.

Ben Myers

The Millis Institute, Brisbane, Australia

Acknowledgments

It has been ten years since I began musing about the relationship between theology and fashion. Little did I know the journey my fledgling thoughts would take me on. As wonderful as the intellectual expedition has been, undoubtedly the richest part has been the friends and mentors I have met along the way.

The greatest stretch of the journey took place by way of doctoral research at Fuller Theological Seminary and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam under William Dyrness (Fuller) and Cornelis van der Kooi (VU Amsterdam). Both of these men have granted my work careful attention, critical evaluation, and tenacious support. Gratitude is also due to Richard Mouw and George Harinck for their indispensable advocacy and thoughtful guidance as I tested my research at academic conferences in North America and Europe. I would be remiss not to acknowledge the critical role fashion theorist Malcolm Barnard has played on the journey. His willingness to facilitate a directed reading of a doctoral student in theology embodies the horizons this volume explores.

In addition to these mentors, a number of scholars have offered me various levels of intellectual companionship along the way. Ben Meyers, whose foreword kindly acclimates readers to this volume, has been a source of encouragement and offered helpful suggestions; as has Jon Anderson, Vince Bacote, Nick Barrett, Kyle Bennett, Erik Dailey, Marinus de Jong, James Eglinton, Matt Kaemingk, Wil Rogan, Jason Sexton, Jamie Smith, Matt Wilcoxen, Cory Willson, and Taylor Worley.

Lifelong friends Jeremy Dorse, Jeff Lingle, Shelly Millsap, and Richard Mullis have been my sanity through thick and thin. My dear friend and pastoral colleague Josh Swanson shielded my schedule during a particularly busy season of ministry so I could complete the project. Faith Robinson and Alicia Swanson carefully read early versions of the manuscript. And the volume was vastly improved by the superb editing skills of Ryan Smernoff. All remaining faults are my own.

I am deeply grateful for the way Carey Newman, Cade Jarrell, and the entire team at Baylor University Press have brought their respective skills to bear on the volume. My entire experience with BUP has been a delight.

Finally, this volume is dedicated to my precious daughter Chloe. I will never forget the day she turned a pillowcase into a gown fit for a queen. I didn’t know it then, but that was the beginning of it all.

RSC

Long Beach, CA

Advent 2019

Introduction

In Jonathan Swift’s allegory The Tale of the Tub, three brothers receive wonderful coats from their father. Upon giving the coats, the father (i.e., God) warns the brothers not to amend them in any way. In spite of this warning, Peter (the apostle Peter), Martin (Martin Luther), and Jack (John Calvin) set off to do just the opposite, bringing their frocks in line with the latest fashion. The results are ruinous.

Swift employed this allegory to argue that traditional Anglicanism not be amended in any way. What is easily missed in Swift’s story is not his argument but a well-worn assumption; namely, theology and fashion don’t mix. This supposition is not without reason. Upon first impression, fashion and theology appear disparate: Fashion traffics in the new; theology traffics in the eternal. Fashion is concerned with beautifying the body; theology is concerned with beautifying the soul. Fashion evinces the frivolous; theology evokes the serious. Fashion invites arrogance; theology calls for humility. Fashion prances in with her seasonal transgressions; theology carries herself with moral solemnity.

The apparent disparities between fashion and theology have led to the hypothesis that the rise of fashion is complicit with the fall of theology: fashion’s constantly shifting nature is an eventuation of the corrupting influence of late medieval nominalism—its cult of self-surveillance traceable to Luther’s undue fixation on his own salvation, and its conspicuous celebration of market forces rooted in what Max Weber saw as Calvinism’s unwitting investment in capitalism.

But even if fashion and theology are not pitted against each other, the perplexity of how both could possibly be discussed in the same breath remains. To some, the conversation involves filling in the lacuna of the influence of period dress on liturgical vestments. To others, the relationship between theology and fashion is displayed in textile patterns influenced by theology (think of the role of Leviticus’ condemnations of mixing two kinds of cloth with the stripe’s historic association with the diabolical). While some decide to take up the commercialization of religious symbolism (e.g., the popular Jesus Is My Homeboy T-shirts), others turn to cataloging the innumerable references to religious iconography on catwalks (the Cross, the Resurrection, the Virgin Mary). There are even some for whom such discussions entail reflecting devotionally on what putting on Christ might mean.

Interesting as such discussions may be, they prove unsatisfying in the end. For they fail to take seriously the fundamental issues regarding fashion: the kind of thing fashion is, where fashion comes from, how fashion shapes the world, and the logic by which fashion operates. These subjects plunge us into the burgeoning discourse of fashion studies—a field that boasts an expansive body of publications, degree programs, and institutions; a dialogue generating a host of academic conferences; and a focal subject for a number of dedicated academic journals. Indeed, this current multidisciplinary engagement with fashion not only exposes hasty dismissals, quick solutions, and cursory treatments but also points the way forward for a full-orbed investigation into the mysterious dynamics driving the relationship between fashion and theology.

Moreover, this expanding discussion signals that the time has come for theology to take fashion seriously. Indeed, theology has engaged other cultural developments and their related theoretical discourses (music, film, literature, etc.), so she is no longer able to excuse herself from the conversation. She must break her silence, offering a long-overdue fashion theology—a serious account of the dynamic relationship between herself and fashion.

The following is such an account. Seeking to unlock the mysterious dynamic between fashion and theology, it offers a journey through five critical intersections that fashion and theology share: tradition, reform, public discourse, art, and everyday life. Like a detective solving a whodunit, it proceeds from one crime scene to the next, piecing together evidence of mutual investments, conflicting interests, and hotly contested terrain. The resulting picture—far from mere disparity or a superhighway connecting the two—reveals a world between fashion and theology that first impressions could scarcely imagine.

The journey begins with the first of these sites where fashion and theology meet: tradition.

I

Fashion Theology as Tradition

Nothing is quite as illuminating as backstory. Crime-scene investigators know this better than most. Having identified the key players, the investigator questions how these players came to be involved. Solving the mysterious dynamic between fashion and theology is no different. Here, too, the task begins by uncovering their shared history—that is, how the traditions of interaction between fashion and theology have shaped their current relationship.

Steeped as it is in historic creeds, thinkers, and methodologies, it is easy to think of theology as having a rich past. Less obvious, however, is the importance of the past for fashion; fashion is, after all, known for its fads. Although fads are certainly part of fashion’s dynamic, fashion is part of a much larger cultural phenomenon that boasts its own history. This broader historical context not only involves the story of the rise of the rapid interplay of dress that characterizes fashion, but also reaches back into the history of dress that established the framework from which and by which fashion emerges.

Therefore, one of the critical tasks of fashion theology is to uncover the historic ways theology and dress have intertwined: their earliest encounters, sources of conflict, tentative resolutions, and enduring tensions. In exposing this long tradition, fashion theology draws attention to the formation of tacit assumptions and unstated expectations between theology and dress—assumptions and expectations that continue to inform the relationship between fashion and theology today.

+1 —— No Hairdos in Heaven

Whatever is plastered on is the devil’s work.

Tertullian

The term Roman dress is something of a misnomer. The truth is, dress in the Roman world experienced tremendous change from the relatively fixed dress codes of the republic and early empire to more complex forms of signification associated with the middle and late empire.¹ Increasing material resources, emerging cosmopolitan centers, and an expanding multicultural context all contributed to the sartorial transformation of the Roman world—from a static form of dress to a rather complex, shifting sartorial phenomenon. So, while it is important to avoid equating dress in the Roman world with fashion in the modern sense, dress historians rightly maintain that the Roman world developed its own fashion codes.²

Christianity was born into this developing system of ancient fashion, and, in fact, a number of Christians in this period demonstrated a sensitivity to the symbolic potency dress held in the Roman world. In light of this cultural phenomenon, early Christian theologians took up the logic of Roman dress, offering theological treatises, sermons, and letters detailing a fitting faith.³

One of the earliest examples of theological reflection on dress is found in the work of Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–ca. 215). In his Paedagogus (Gr. Παιδαγωγός, lit. The Instructor), Clement’s sartorial instruction for the newly converted demonstrates a surprising awareness of the details of dress within the Roman world. Beyond simple theological reflections on various texts that speak of clothing (Gen 3:7; 2 Kgs 1:8; Isa 20:2; Jer 13:1; Dan 7:9; Matt 6:25; Mark 1:6; Luke 7:22-28; Rev 6:9, 11), Clement expounds the implication of these texts for Christian approaches to various items. A critical attitude toward ancient fashions is found throughout his assessment. As Clement queries, how could those who obey Matthew 6:25 possibly maintain:⁴

Love of ornament, and dying of wool, and variety of colors, and fastidiousness about gems, and exquisite working of gold, and still more, of artificial hair and wreathed curls; and furthermore, of staining the eyes, and plucking out hairs, and painting with rouge and white lead, and dying of the hair, and the wicked arts that are employed in such deceptions?⁵

Although Clement has a place for modest ornamentation in line with one’s age, place in society, character, and vocation, the thrust of his message is that in light of vices associated with sumptuous clothing (vanity, pride, and immodesty), and given the calling of Christians to share their resources with those less fortunate, those following Christ should don simple, straightforward, and modest attire that eschews all strangeness and extravagance.⁶ In short, the godly were to dress with a self-disciplined gentility.

Other theologians in this period weighed in, offering similar detailed accounts and issuing their own warnings regarding the dangers of dress. Ambrose (ca. 340–397) sounds a similar note, calling Christians to adorn their bodies in a way that is natural and artless, unstudied rather than elaborated, not heightened by costly and glistening garments, but just clad in ordinary clothing.⁷ In kind is the counsel of the silver-tongued orator and theologian John Chrysostom (ca. 349–407). Like other patristic writers, Chrysostom does not hesitate to go into specific and practical detail when guiding his congregants in the way Christians should dress.⁸ Echoing his contemporaries in a sermon on Hebrews 11:37-38, Chrysostom drives home the importance of simple and modest dress, charging his fellow Christians, Let our garments be such as merely to cover us. For God hath given them to us for this reason, that we may cover our nakedness; and this any sort of garment can do, though but of trifling cost.⁹

Tertullian: Faithful Dress in a Godless Culture

The above survey indicates dress was not an uncommon subject for Christian theologians in the patristic period. More could be said about how these and other patristic voices spoke about dress.¹⁰ However, these voices pale in comparison to the earliest and most prolific theological voice discussing dress: Tertullian of Carthage (ca. 160–ca. 225). Although celebrated as a great apologist and a seminal source for Western theology,¹¹ less attention has been cast on Tertullian’s treatises on dress such as On the Apparel of Women I & II (De Cultu Feminarum I & II), On the Veiling of Virgins (De Virginibus Velandis), and On the Pallium (De Pallio).¹² In light of the considerable attention Tertullian gives to dress, and given the fact that many of his arguments are found among previous and subsequent Christian theologians, an understanding of his works on dress merits attention.

In On the Apparel of Women I & II, Tertullian compels Christian women to forego the fledgling fashions of his Roman North African context for a simple, modest, and somber decorum. To build his case, Tertullian makes various assertions. The most notorious among his points is his claim that women are the devil’s gateway, who, in light of their role in introducing sin into the world, should go about in a garb of penitence rather than the pomp of fine attire.¹³ This unbridled shaming of his female audience has drawn much critical attention from feminists.¹⁴ As important as such criticisms are, one must be careful to not overlook the way Tertullian sees women colluding with the devil’s sartorial schemes. As Tertullian clarifies:

In their own persons, I suppose, they convict, they censure, the Artificer of all things! For censure they do when they amend, when they add to [God’s work], taking their additions, of course, from the adversary artificer. That adversary artificer is the devil. . . . Whatever is born is the work of God. Whatever, then, is plastered on is the devil’s work.¹⁵

Tertullian here contends that elements used for luxurious dress (gold, silver, precious stones, pearls, etc.) are elevated beyond their place and value and therefore used in a way that is inconsonant with their natural origin and utility.¹⁶ What’s more, such amending of God’s work strikes Tertullian as a distinctly diabolical practice. Since God never made sheep to be born with purple and sky-blue fleeces,¹⁷ the ultimate source behind morphing the natural colors