Make the Church Great Again Biretta
This week's Met Gala proved that religious-inspired manner can make a show-stopping spectacle. But for ecclesiastical tailor Rhyce Winterbourne, mass itself is already just that.
"It's a operation in itself … for the optics of God," says the Sydney-based maker of clerical wear.
"I grew upwards in a Catholic school and I saw all the fancy stuff on stage during mass, and was really impressed.
"When you're a kid you have a fascination near it because the clergy are just correct up at that place, aren't they? They're a footling fleck supernatural in a child's eyes."
Mr Winterbourne entered the tailoring profession in his 30s and has been making religious dress and accessories for the past 17 years from his store RJW Shirts & Ecclesiastical.
He's sewn thousands of cassocks — the full-length, usually black, garment worn by priests and rectors — designed hooded habits for Carmelite nuns, and even hand-stitched a bishop'southward funerial mitre.
A mitre, in example you're wondering, is the curved, pointed headdress worn by Catholic bishops, popes and — equally of this week's Met Gala — Rihanna (according to Mr Winterbourne, the popstar'due south Maison Margiela mitre was far more bejewelled than the boilerplate religious headpiece).
Louder than words
Christ Church St Laurence rector Daniel Dries is i of Mr Winterbourne's long-continuing clients.
He's a fellow member of Sydney'southward "high church" Anglican community and, as such, can be visibly differentiated from his "low church" Anglican peers due to clothing.
Simply put, high church building clergy wearable elaborate liturgical apparel — non dissimilar Cosmic clerics — while low church rectors are allowed, sometimes even encouraged, to sport casual, secular clothes.
"Simply we would say that the symbols that are used [and] the dress that we wear are able to limited things that we can't necessarily capture in words.
"When we habiliment vestments in a church building service, what we're really doing is taking away our personality — we're there in a part to perform a function, and it's non most who we are equally individuals."
Albs and Cinctures: Demystifying coded clothing
The Reverend'south individuality is clothed before every mass with a great number of religious garments.
First, he dons a black robe, known as a cassock or, in Cosmic and high church traditions, a soutane.
"The soutane has buttons down all the middle — information technology's meant to have 33 buttons for the years that Christ lived," he points out.
Next comes a cincture, or fabric chugalug, and a white piece of fabric resembling an apron that's known as an amice.
"You wear it over your shoulders and you're supposed to touch your head with it when you put it on," says the Reverend.
"Then there's a white garment that goes over the superlative, called an alb, and and then we habiliment another girdle or cincture."
Anglican clergy too wearable a long silk stole, symbolising their place in religious role.
Bishops wear their stole hanging straight downwardly, rectors cross the ends over, and deacons fold stoles on the side of their waist, signalling their position of service.
"When y'all're first ordained, yous're ordained a deacon … and the thought is that people who would wait on tabular array would have an apron at the side that they would wipe their easily on," the Reverend explains.
But the most elaborate piece of wearable worn by Anglican rectors is the ankle-length cloak known as a cope.
Technicolour cloakroom
Decorated with embroidery, fringing and detailed beading, copes are made in a diversity of hues to represent different stages of the liturgical calendar.
At Christ Church St Laurence, the colourful drove of copes takes up a small room.
"Nosotros have purple [copes] over here which are for Advent and Lent," points out Reverend Dries.
"In this church, the tradition is to vesture purple for a funeral because it'due south the colour of solemnity and sorrow."
Gold is designated to Christmas and Easter Day, along with meaning feast days, while white is worn for the season of Easter.
"The red tin signify two things: during Pentecost, it'south the coming of the Holy Spirit — red is virtually fire and the Spirit," says the Reverend.
The dark-green copes are worn for the remainder of the year, signalling growth and rejuvenation.
The royal touch
But information technology's not just the color of the copes that speaks volumes — it's the magnificence of the pattern.
"The cope is a symbol of authority," says Reverend Dries.
"I mean, plain kings and queens would wear something like that to say they accept an important office."
The reference to royalty isn't completely without merit. According to Reverend Dries, one of the copes at Christ Church features fabric from a decoration at the coronation of the Queen'due south father in Westminster Abbey.
"Later the coronation, [the fabric] was taken down, chopped up and sent all over the earth," he says.
"This is supposedly the fabric from that, and then it's heading upwardly towards 100-years-old."
Co-ordinate to Reverend Dries, some of the copes price thousands of dollars.
One set in particular comes from Watts & Co. — "an one-time ecclesiastical haberdashery store just nearly Westminster Abbey" — while another channels 1970s block-colouring.
While it might exist a large collection, Reverend Dries says the church hasn't paid for any vestments.
"Parishioners usually donate them in retentiveness of someone or in thanksgiving, so we've been blest that people are very generous," he says.
"[The parishioners] come to this church from the Bluish Mountains and Canberra and Newcastle, and then we have hundreds of people every Sunday.
"They come from a huge area, merely they are drawn to the music and the liturgy and the tradition that we have here."
With singers, models and taste-makers shedding low-cal on religious fashion courtesy of the Met Gala, it'south possible these ecclesiastical traditions will be appreciated by an even wider audience.
Posted , updated
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-10/high-fashion-high-church-why-religious-dress-always-performance/9740076
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