Article

Culture

Fashion

13 February 2025

6 min read

London Fashion Week: unstitching the tension between designers and religion

Why couture turns churches into runways.

Alexandra Kytka-Sharpe

Alexandra is a content producer at University of the Arts London.

Two models stride along a catwalk of a fashion show held in a church

Orgamea, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

During London Fashion Week, galleries, warehouses, halls and factories transform into runways to showcase designers’ newest collections. But sometimes they choose a venue that would otherwise be unexpected for an industry-insider event- one of London’s many churches.

In some ways, the Christian chapel is a natural runway – a crowd cut in two with all eyes on a procession down the central aisle. A church wedding might be the most literal analogy- with the bridesmaids and wedding party as the models on a runway showcasing their fine gowns. But the reasons why a designer might choose a Christian venue go beyond a convenient space.

A venue of smells, bells, fabrics and painting

The Christian Church has a rich history of materiality that other Western institutions would struggle to compete with. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Church was the main proprietor of all artistic practice. Churches commissioned painters to beautify their walls and to illustrate biblical stories in the form of triptychs and altars. Textile workers embroidered intricate patterns onto clerical vestments, and metal workers and glass makers collaborated to craft stained glass windows. The Church and art were inseparable and for many, attending church was the only way you would see these human-crafted artistic wonders.

Church history and art history are so intertwined that even in the present day, it’s hard to be in the creative industries without some awareness of it.

That sense of materiality is a strong reference point for many who grew up attending more traditional Catholic, Anglican or Orthodox churches, but even for those whose experience with church might involve only the occasional tour of a beautiful church in Italy or Spain. Jean Paul Gaultier, a French haute couture designer, used Catholic iconography in his 2007 show at Paris Fashion week. Each model donned a halo crafted from materials ranging from the roses, metal, feathers, jewells, pearls, gold and yes- even stained glass. Some models carried what looked like hymnals, and a few were even wearing the image of Virgin Mary or Jesus printed onto a veil or fitted dress.

Andrew Bolton, curator of the 2017 exhibit Heavenly Bodies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said “what we call the Catholic imagination” has “engaged artists and designers and shaped their approach to creativity.” Regardless of personal belief, Bolton believes “Beauty has often been a bridge between believers and unbelievers.”

Beyond materiality, the history of Christianity has given us much of the language and concepts by which we think through some of life’s biggest questions. Even if you have never thought of yourself as religious, you will have come into contact with ideas of creation, sin, and redemption that come from the Christian Faith.

At a fashion show, the designer is Creator and his models walk across the runway to showcase his creations. The crowd may be just as religiously devoted to him as church goers are to their god. A church is the natural venue for a designer who thinks himself worthy of that kind of attention.

A church-made-runway is a symbol of designer as god- god of their own creations, their brand, and perhaps the future of fashion itself. By taking on religious iconography, designers become the centre of glory- at least for the 45 minute runtime of the show.

Sometimes, like Gaultier, they feel inspired by the church’s rich iconography. At other times, like McQueen- they are upset at a world created by people who take advantage of power and use religion against others.

Subverting religious ideas

But using the language of Christianity is often about more than co-opting it for a designer’s own glory. It’s often also about subverting the symbolism of religion - to make statements about the hypocrisy or limitations of religion on individuals.

One of the most famous shows at London Fashion Week was the 1996 Alexander McQueen Dante at Christ Church in Spitalfields, East London. Based on the Christian-inspired Dante’s Divine Comedy, the collection featured a combination of photographs taken during the Vietnam war, bold takes on men’s tailoring, and black crucifiction-adorned eye masks borrowed from the work of photographer Joel-Peter Witkin. According to McQueen, “religion has caused every war in the world, which is why I showed it in a church.” Other more recent shows at churches include Dilara Findikoglu's show in 2018 at St. Andrew’s Holborn which dressed models in devil-inspired costumes and Julien McDonald’s show at Southwark Cathedral in 2019 which was heavily criticised for bringing revealing clothes into a sacred space.

McQueen and other designers use their shows in churches to question its integrity. Many who have experienced hurt in the church or from Christians in their personal lives resonate with these fashion statements.

Fashion’s subversion of religious ideas cuts to a core tension many of us experience. I have always felt drawn to Christian ideas. I love the idea that God created humans in his image to “do his handiwork.” Such creativity has fueled human endeavours as famous as Michel Angelo’s Sistine Chapel and as ordinary as my personal wardrobe. And that a loving heavenly Father sacrificed himself to redeem the world and restore creation-it is an extraordinary thought.

At the same time, the history of the world, of Christians and of the church feels weighty. Christians have used religion to justify colonialism, racism, slavery, and a host of other atrocious acts of taking advantage over vulnerable people. In our personal lives, Christians we know may have acted in bad faith- as greedy, selfish and unkind in their dealings with others.

And so, Fashion often encapsulates this duality of having both awe and anger at the church.

But we also know that Fashion isn’t an answer to these problems either. Powerful people in the fashion industry deal with the same temptations of greed and power that others do. The industry is fraught with its own problems of hypocrisy, of doing harm to the women they praise, to the earth whose materials they use, and the vulnerable whose labour they exploit.

I work at an arts and fashion university, where I often see students creatively wrestle with ideas of life, death, faith and hope. Sometimes, like Gaultier, they feel inspired by the church’s rich iconography. At other times, like McQueen- they are upset at a world created by people who take advantage of power and use religion against others. It can be easy for those who come from faiths that are questioned in art to be outraged at this subversion- like many were with McQueen’s original show.

In the novel I am Asher Lev by Jewish rabbi Chaim Potok, a young Hasidic boy in 1950s Brooklyn grapples with the limitations of his religious community as he realises his passion for art. A key moment comes when he realises that there is a difference between the “good” and the “beautiful.” His mentor Jacob tells him,

“I do not sculpt and paint to make the world sacred. I sculpt and paint to give permanence to my feelings about how terrible the world truly is.”

An anthropologist by trade, I look at the work of Fashion designers who use and subvert Christian ideas as a culture grappling with faith in a post-religion world. Humans are unique in their ability to change culture through the things they make and the concepts that come out of them. As a Christian, that creativity, and that freedom to wrestle with life’s toughest questions, are both gifts from God.

Faced with fashions that challenge the status quo or make people uncomfortable, I ask this- What questions is this designer asking? Do I have similar questions? And importantly- where can I start to find some answers?

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Article

Comment

Romance

14 February 2025

5 min read

Getting hitched should benefit more than the advantaged

Marriage’s decline impacts outcomes for all.

Daniel Lilley and Simon Cansdale

Daniel is a researcher at Civitas and Simon is a vicar in Winchester.

A bride dressed colourfully stands next to her groom, dressed similarly, as he sits in a wheelchair.

Ellie Cooper on Unsplash.

Of all the dramatic changes to Britain in the last half century, one of the least discussed is the extraordinary decline in marriage.

The marriage rate has fallen by two-thirds in the last 50 years. It was just above six per cent in 1972 and has now been under two per cent since 2017.

This remarkable decline has corresponded with a rise in a relatively new relation type: cohabitation. Cohabitation was extremely uncommon before the 1960s, and even by 1986 just 10 per cent of new mothers were cohabitants. It is, however, rapidly becoming the mainstream. Now 35 per cent of babies are born to cohabiting mothers, and the total number of UK cohabiting couples increased from 1.5 to 3.7 million between 1996 and 2022.

Much of this is due to couples delaying marriage: 84 per cent of religious and 91 per cent of civil marriages are now between couples that already live together, and the average age when first marrying has climbed by 10 years since the early 1970s. But it is also due to many more couples not marrying at all.

Opinions understandably differ on this social transition away from marriage and towards cohabitation. It is a point of progress worth celebrating that the previous societal shunning of those, especially women, who had children outside of marriage has been left in the past. However, such progress has not been without consequences. Cohabitations are less stable, on average, than marriages. Cohabiting parents are around three times as likely to separate in the first five years of their children’s life as married couples.

This stability is not simply because wealthier, more highly educated people tend to have stable families and also tend to marry. Studies by World Family Maps and the Marriage Foundation have shown marriage to be a larger factor in family stability than either education or income.

Nor does the stability come from couples staying together miserably. Studies undertaken in 2017 and 2024 looked at the outcomes of couples 10 years on from considering their relationships to be ‘on the brink’. In the initial study, while 70 per cent of cohabiting couples had separated in the decade since considering themselves ‘on the brink’, 70 per cent of the married couples had remained together. Perhaps even more crucially, just seven per cent of those married couples that had stayed together were unhappy in their relationship a decade on. The 2024 study found none of the sample of married couples that had stayed together were still unhappy 10 years on. For those that had stayed together, things had improved.

This family instability that the decline of marriage has caused is also unevenly distributed. Affluent couples – often those most likely to criticise the concept of marriage – are much more likely to marry than disadvantaged ones.

Looking at socioeconomic groups, seven in ten mothers from the most advantaged group are married, while just a third of those from the two most disadvantaged groups are. The effect is geographic, too. Institute for Fiscal Studies research has found parents having children are more likely to be married if they are living in better educated areas. For the advantaged, it is compassionately affirmational to suggest that every relationship is equal, even though the advantaged themselves choose the most secure option of marriage: a hypocrisy only tolerated due to the potent fear of seeming judgemental.

The consequence of this is deepening inequality: disadvantaged families are rendered more likely to breakdown, while children from affluent backgrounds are disproportionately likely to enjoy the ‘the two-parent privilege’, the substantial emotional and developmental advantages of growing up in a stable home. Melissa Kearney coined the phrase, and her evidence shows how children grow up, on average, to have better educational outcomes, better emotional and physical wellbeing, and higher incomes if they are raised in two-parent homes.

Stable families are foundational to a stable society, and marriage is crucial to stable families.

So, why are marriage rates so much higher among wealthier couples than poorer ones, and why is this gap growing?

We can isolate three reasons in particular, each more solvable than the last.

Most challenging is the feedback loop effect: people whose parents, role-models, and friends have not married are unlikely to do so themselves. The demographic trend compounds itself.

Second, and easily addressable if only the will was there, is the public messaging effect: politicians – and to some extent celebrities – have consistently told the public that marriage is unimportant. In 2017, Marriage Foundation research found that it had been a decade since a cabinet member had discussed marriage in a speech. This has hardly changed in the years since. In 2024, the only major party whose manifesto even mentioned marriage was Reform; even then the focus in the relevant section seemed to be less on marriage and more on getting ‘people trapped on benefits back into the workplace’.

Third is the cost of weddings. A quick flick through top wedding magazines suggests that the average wedding costs upwards of £20,000. Survey evidence from both Marriage Foundation and the Thriving Center of Psychology have found that most young people view weddings as unrealistically expensive.

This financial problem is solvable: much of the costs relate to venue hire. Unless they are having a religious marriage, a couple will need to find a venue that has gone through the bureaucratic process of becoming an ‘approved premises’. The cheapest of these are register offices which, including all expenses, still cost about £500.

This is eminently mendable. The Law Commission proposal to reorganise wedding law around the officiant, not the venue, opens the door for a future of more affordable weddings by removing the regulatory barrier. It will also bring the law in line with that of other home nations.

This proposal will not work by itself, though, it will need to be supported by creativity in wedding planning.

Wedding costs can be substantially reduced by taking a DIY approach. Food, drinks, and decorations can often be coordinated amongst enthusiastic (and appropriately competent!) guests.

Booze free weddings are a growing phenomenon, and especially good for weddings with children.

Such ‘group-effort’ approaches often have a unique feel thanks to the high participation of guests, and people are more likely to remember events that they feel a sense of ownership of, having helped make them happen.

Alongside this is a recommendation by the Centre for Social Justice. It proposes subsidising the necessary statutory fees for the poorest couples, up to £550 per couple. An inexpensive and hugely beneficial adjustment to improve wedding accessibility for the least fortunate.