Forget feathers, fringe and sparkles, if bold and brash colour is your thing, look no further than the conclave at the Vatican.
While the world’s fashionistas have been eyeing the 2025 Met Gala in New York – with audacious looks from leather-clad Kim Kardashian and Madonna in ivory satin – in Rome another display of pageantry is poised for its moment in the sun.
Most vibrant tone
Starting on Wednesday, 133 cardinal electors charged with naming the next leader of the Catholic Church will be ablaze in the colour palette’s most vibrant tone – scarlet.
The dazzling red, symbolising the blood of Christ, is the colour that marks cardinals out from lower-ranking prelates.
But for special occasions – like the conclave to choose the next pope, held under Michelangelo’s frescoed ceiling in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel – they pull out all the stops.
The base of their so-called “choir dress” is the full-length red cassock, with 33 buttons down the front, partially covered by a rochet, a white garment with a lace border.
Covering the torso to the elbows is the red mozzetta, or short cape, atop which the cardinal wears his imposing pectoral cross.
The zucchetto, or silk skullcap, is worn on the head, covered by the biretta, the rigid, square-sided cap.
In St Peter’s Square on Tuesday, British tourist Stephanie Linnell, 56, marvelled at “the colours they’ll use (and) this setting”.
Michael Archibald, 54, added that irrespective of one’s religion, “it’s still an occasion that will blow you away”.
But Lidia Spiezia, 75, grumbled that anyone not born into the Latin Catholic tradition wouldn’t understand the rituals preceding the new pope’s election.
“For our culture it’s a sacred thing,” said the Roman.
“It’s not a theatrical spectacle.”
Vatican’s loudest colours
The cardinals will on Wednesday afternoon walk in procession to the Sistine Chapel for their vote.
They will be accompanied by lower-ranking members of the church, whether bishops or monseigneurs dressed in another eye-popping shade – fuchsia.
And don’t forget the Swiss Guards, the papal garrison wearing the Vatican’s loudest colours.
Their uniforms, characterised by a cinched vest and roomy breeches, carry the Medici family colours in vertical stripes of red, dark blue and orange-yellow.
The procession may be a colourful affair but it’s hardly frivolous, with centuries of tradition and the solemnity of the event behind each ritual, liturgical object and item of clothing.
“It’s not the building. It’s not the vestments. It’s the spirituality,” said Capuchin friar Kaisar Sihombing.
“There is something deeper.”
The Indonesian friar, 35, was milling in St Peter’s Square on Tuesday, dressed in the sober brown tunic and cord around the waist that mark the Franciscan orders, which take a vow of poverty.
The conclave’s pomp and circumstance, he said, is “all part of the identity of the Church – there’s nothing wrong with it”.
In his forward to a 2018 exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art – site of the Met Gala – on “Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”, curator Andrew Bolton called dress “fundamental” to any discussion about religion.
“Although some might regard fashion as a frivolous pursuit far removed from the sanctity of religion, most of the vestments worn by the secular clergy and religious orders of the Catholic Church actually have their origins in secular dress,” he wrote.
Throughout the Church’s history, such garments have “affirmed religious allegiances, asserted religious differences, and functioned to distinguish hierarchies as well as gender,” he wrote.
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By Garrin Lambley © Agence France-Presse
