Alberto Fabio Ambrosio OP
Invisible Dress
Weaving a Theology of Fashion
This article establishes the framework for a (Christian) theology of fashion. The text is structured around three areas: the first reveals how theology can accommodate in its field of thought both the idea of dress (also viewed in terms of its materiality) and the way in which modern society experiments with it: fashion. The second area aims to explore responsible ethics for fashion. Finally, the new perspective requires the aesthetics of dress and fashion to be addressed from a theological point of view. Despite its rich history, theological aesthetics has scarcely ever concerned itself with developing an aesthetic discourse for dress and fashion, other than for liturgical and religious attire.
Elke Pahud de Mortanges
My Self, My Dress, My Choice?
Vestimentary practices, codes and discourses in the context of faith and religion
This study examines the relationship between clothing, religion and identity. The author demonstrates that the choice of clothing is not a purely personal choice, but is shaped by social norms, cultural habits and religious codes. Throughout history, clothing has served as a tool for both social classification and stigmatisation. Religious traditions have regulated the dress of both sexes, though over time the rules have focused primarily on the female body. The text also examines the phenomenon of modest fashion in the 21st century – an intercultural trend that oscillates between female self-determination and the reproduction of traditional narratives of chastity and modesty. In conclusion, the author emphasises that the topic merits further interdisciplinary research.
Michal Vaníček
A Clothed Spectacle
The Anthropology of the Fashion Image
The study applies Hans Belting’s anthropology of images to fashion theory. Belting’s triad – image, medium and body – serves as an analytical tool for examining how clothing transforms the biological body into a socially and culturally legible body. Clothing is not merely an accessory to the body, but its medium: through it, the body becomes both the bearer and producer of images. Vaníček illustrates this theory with specific examples from fashion collections. The conclusion is provocative: even the absence of clothing does not disrupt the image – the naked body itself becomes a medium and confirms that the clothed (and unclothed) body is always a cultural image.
Robert Covolo
Fashion Theology as Everyday Drama
This is a chapter from the book Fashion Theology (Waco 2020), in which the author explores the dynamics between fashion and theology. He demonstrates that these are not two isolated worlds of theoretical inquiry, but rather mutually influential and interpenetrating fields. Author explores the drama of everyday dressing, which he sees as a key intersection between fashion and theology. He views fashion as a means capable of elevating everyday life to a new plane of dramatic action and deepening the human experience of time, narrative and performance. In doing so, he draws on St Augustine’s conception of time, and on the theory of narrative by the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. He demonstrates that fashion is an expression of the human desire to find eternity in our fragment of the present, a desire for narratives that transcend birth and death, and a desire to cross the boundaries of who we are and become who we could be.
Tereza Jiroutová Kynčlová
Under the Virgin’s Cloak
Religious Garments and the Postcolonial and Decolonial Turn in Fashion Studies
In this essay, a Czech university lecturer, English scholar and editor demonstrates how postcolonial and decolonial theories have diversified thinking about fashion and how these innovative approaches can be applied to the field of religious clothing and textiles within the Christian tradition. Using selected examples, particularly that of Our Lady of Guadalupe, she elucidates strategies of decolonial practice in relation to fashion and religious clothing, and suggests possibilities for a multi-layered reading, interpretation and also re-signification of established practices or aesthetic norms.
Petra Koudelková
Religious symbols in fashion
History, inspiration and commercialisation
This article seeks to capture the relationship between religious visuality and fashion as a specific manifestation of cultural communication. It draws on the theory of the mediatisation of religion, which describes the weakening of institutional control over religious images and their transformation into open cultural resources. These processes are linked to fashion as a visually oriented social field in which symbols acquire new meanings through both individual and collective interpretation. The text demonstrates that religious symbols in fashion can function as aesthetic elements, expressions of identity, sources of spiritual support and cultural commentary.
With a hat in hand, you can travel the world…
Interview with Liběna Rochová
The interview with designer Liběna Rochová centres on her retrospective exhibition at the Moravian Gallery in Brno. Rochová explains why she left ready-to-wear production forty years ago. She criticises the devaluation of the fashion industry, where media self-promotion trumps craftsmanship. In her work, she champions minimalism, timelessness and sustainability. She also speaks about her teaching work at UMPRUM, the role of intuition and erudition. For her, clothing is not a superficial matter – it is a way of dressing the soul.
Norbert Schmidt
A new robe for the Virgin Mary at Svatá Hora
The text recounts a visit by designer Liběna Rochová to Svatá Hora near Příbram, where she created a new cloak for the local Gothic statue of the Virgin Mary. Rochová arrived without a finished design, carrying only white tissue paper, and intuitively shaped the cloak on the spot to highlight the statue’s original tenderness – the vulnerability of the naked Baby Jesus and the gentle gesture of maternal protection.