Devotion through Fashion

At the top of spring, fashion fanatics on social media begin their preparation for the first Monday of May. The Met Gala, its yearly theme, and the guest list become the hottest topics of the season. While many look forward to a new red carpet with some of the most robust displays of high fashion in America, many use this time to remember the iconic 2018 gala, highly revered as one of the best.

The theme was “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” and opulence was the star of the show. The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes the exhibit as “a dialogue between fashion and medieval art from The Met collection to examine fashion's ongoing engagement with the devotional practices and traditions of Catholicism.” The display featured garments never seen outside the Vatican, and was staged for anyone to see. 

With a consistent obsession for the one-year exhibit, one has to wonder about the meaning of Catholic-specific devotion through clothing. Gen Z and their never-ending subculture aesthetics have created ways for worship, or a subversion of subscription to religion, to be stylized. From “tradcath coquette” and the aesthetics of “Ethel Cain core” to the rise of conservatism amongst a younger generation, the 2020s have proven themselves to be a slightly confused time for Catholicism. There’s an evident tug of love and hate from both ends of the spectrum of belief. What lies within the grey area, however, is fashion. 

Clothing has been an important staple in creating the status of Catholicism. As “Heavenly Bodies” explores, the Catholic fashion in medieval Europe became an important marker for how important cloth itself was to become within the church. In her essay, “The cardinal’s new clothes?” Emma Anderson explains how rags and simple garments were integral to bridging the gap between heaven and earth. Both Jesus Christ and his mother, the Virgin Mary, were ascended into heaven, leaving all of their clothes connected to their holy bodies, in a sense. In the following centuries, Catholic fashion aided in the establishment of its cultural hierarchy. The opulence that was evident in the robes that adorned cardinals and bishops, painted in royal pigments of crimson and purple, respectively. This display is meant to celebrate the majesty of God’s presence in this world, acting as an extension of the heavens. It also stands as a representation of the power and continuity that the institution of the Catholic Church has held over time. 

Totems from the Catholic Church play a large role in the manner in which its followers wear their worship. Representations of the Virgin Mary or imagery of the Crucifixion are circulated in the current landscape of how Catholicism is aestheticized for the new digital age.

While the Met’s 2018 display of Catholic fashion is a prominent mark for the current rise of Catholic aesthetics in cool girl fashion, it has slowly infiltrated algorithms for years and has culminated in an entirely new subculture. The fetishization of the religion can be tied to the fact that it stems from material culture where the physical pieces of memorabilia are meant to tie its followers to the divine. This makes the allure of the fashion pieces themselves enticing to those who either practice the way of the church or who grew up in and around it. 

The subversion of Catholic symbols in media dates back to the mid-1900s, implementing itself into mediums like film and music, which is inevitably how they trickled their way down into alternative fashion. From Rosemary’s Baby (1968) to Madonna’s “Like A Virgin,” the scandalizing nature of defying Catholicism’s core values are enough to ruffle the feathers of the general public. The iconography in conjunction with the highlighting of sins is enough for fans of pop music and horror films alike to follow in the footsteps of the potential blasphemous representation of their worship. Developments into the modern stan area are best highlighted in the Lana del Rey fandom space, in which her use of religious imagery in lyrics has created a correlation to what is now coined the #catholicaesthetic.

In the publication TeenInk, user pim2109 cites Del Rey’s “glamorization of passivity in the face of abuse” as a large reason that a younger audience is translating that into an aestheticized version of the concepts that surround the practice. The religious imagery and memorabilia no longer represents suffering nor does it bring followers closer to heaven, as previously proposed or even intended in the Middle Ages during the rise and domination of the Catholic church. It now visualizes submission of women, the devout followers, to a male authoritative figure, God himself. 

In a now deleted Tumblr post, musician Ethel Cain claimed we exist in the time of an “Irony Epidemic.” The singer wrote: “there is such a loss of sincerity and everything has to be a joke at all times.” The venn diagram of Ethel Cain stans and Lana del Rey fans likely has a larger crossover than many may realize, and while Cain is not necessarily speaking on her fanbase or the people that use the visuals that accompany her 2022 concept album, Preacher’s Daughter, the theory of the irony epidemic rings true to the aestheticization of Evangelicalism. The #ethelcaincore comes from fans taking the sole visuals and their own personal applications of the themes from Preacher’s Daughter (cannibalism, living in the American south, being raised religious/ Christian, etc.) and applying them to carousels on their personal grid. While Cain’s album centers on Christianity (and more likely, Southern Baptist) and its values that work to disrupt a home life and family, many have blurred the lines due to the Southern Gothic tone of the album and the connection of that particular aesthetic to Catholicism.

The irony, then, of practicing faith itself becomes relevant. 

Another major player in the influence of Catholicism in Gen Z fashion is the “Dimes Square” niche scene in New York City. Controversial figures and podcast hosts Honor Levy and Dasha Nekrasova have made their faith to the Catholic church public, and many online believed that their practice of the religion was insincere and being done in an ironic manner, where Catholicism is more of a vibe rather than a call to devote their life to faith. However, on a podcast, when asked about her choice to convert to the faith, Nekrasova states, “I think a lot of people think I’m being Catholic, ironically, which is not true. But it doesn’t really matter if you’re doing something ironically, because it still works.” Levy also mentioned on her “Wet Brain” podcast that if you perform enough rituals, “...then it becomes real, even if you don’t believe in it.” In this way, the religion finds itself a part of the irony epidemic. 

Low-resolution flash images of moss growing over the Virgin Mary or billboards that litter the Bible belt that call for drivers to be saved by Jesus Christ have become a hashtag subculture on social media. So where does this leave room or worship in the world of fashion? Shocking numbers of red votes in the 2024 presidential race that came from Gen Z confirms what many have theorized online: Conservatism is, and has been, on the rise. The life-altering event of the pandemic caused young people across the world to reckon with themselves in the space they grew up in, facing the parts of themselves that may have been buried in routine and life pre-2020. 

In a search for truth, community, and meaning in a world that continues to fail an entire generation, Catholicism finds itself on a steady increase in young people. This fact of Catholicism and, more importantly, its values on the rise in tandem with the attempt to subvert the practice by satirizing or aestheticizing it leaves too much room for ambiguity. Fear of AI and the unknown can lead many to revert back into a practice that feels traditional, and for those who were raised religious, it feels like a return to youth. The rosary no longer exists as a binary from a string of beads that count our prayers to a fashion statement that embodies female sexuality (a la Madonna) and having a cross hanging in your bedroom could be done in spirituality or in reference. The spectrum of devotion to rebellion of the Catholic church has grown immeasurably broad, and the same can be said for its fashion trends.