When a Cathedral Is a Catwalk

NEW DELHI: Five years after a devastating fire gutted Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the medieval church will reopen this week with processions of hundreds of bishops, priests and deacons in new liturgical garb by French designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac.

“What do you think?” de Castelbajac asked during an interview at his Paris studio as he held up a chasuble, a poncho-like outer vestment that clerics wear for Mass. It is one of 2,000 items, including dalmatics, stoles and miters that Monsignor Laurent Ulrich, the archbishop of Paris, commissioned him to design for the three-day celebration. To execute the designs, de Castelbajac teamed with French designer Gilles Rosier as project manager and 19M, the group of artisanal ateliers owned by Chanel, which includes Paloma couture, Lesage and Montex embroiderers, Goossens goldsmith and Maison Michel millinery.

The chasubles, de Castelbajac explained, are made by Paloma in Scottish broadcloth in a vanilla-white hue, “like the cathedral’s stone.” The fronts and backs bear a large, minimalist cross printed in antique gold, inspired by the Glorious Cross, a monumental altar piece French sculptor Marc Couturier made for the cathedral in 1993. To apply the gold to the fabric, Lesage employed a heat transfer process known as sublimation, the same method used for affixing images on T-shirts.

“We put three layers to give the gold depth and catch the light,” de Castelbajac said as he ran his hand under the fabric to show off its muted shimmer. The crosses are surrounded by a burst of shard-like patches in red, blue, yellow and green flocking, the felt-like material commonly used for sweatshirt lettering. De Castelbajac said the shards, which he cut and glued to the fabric himself, represented the cathedral’s stained glass windows and were arranged to recall “Radiant Baby,” an image by pop artist Keith Haring of a crawling infant framed by rays of light. Haring, who died in 1990 from an AIDS-related illness, was a friend of de Castelbajac’s.

“In the church, lux means light,” de Castelbajac said. “That’s why I proposed to Monsignor Ullrich to design a radiating cross for the liturgical vestments: to express this energy, vibration — rays of light.” Born in Casablanca, Morocco, to an aristocratic French family, de Castelbajac, 74, got his start in fashion in the 1970s, working for Max Mara and Courrèges. In 1978, he introduced his namesake brand and became known for humorous punk- and pop-driven fashion, like the teddy bear coat from 1988, which he said was “a statement against fur.” A variation is now in the permanent collection of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; another was recently worn by Drake at a Toronto Raptors basketball game.

But de Castelbajac also has a long, and strong, association with the Roman Catholic Church. Officially known as the Marquis de Castelbajac, he traces his family’s lineage to the Crusades. His cousin Claire de Castelbajac, an art conservationist who helped restore the frescoes of the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, and who died from meningitis in 1975 at 21, is on the path to sainthood and has passed through the initial stages of canonization. (Her elevation to Servant of God in 1995 was based on reports, including from cloistered nuns at a monastery in France, that prayers for de Castelbajac’s intercession were answered. In 2008, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved the opening of the cause for her beatification.)

In 1992, de Castelbajac designed vestments for priests working in French prisons, and in 1997, he was the creative director for the Paris edition of World Youth Day, a multiday celebration sponsored by the Catholic Church. For the event, which drew more than 1.2 million people, he designed T-shirts, caps and bandannas for attendees; vestments for 500 bishops and 5,000 priests; and the bejeweled chasuble, embroidered by Lesage, and miter, fashioned by Maison Michel, worn by Pope John Paul II — all with a rainbow as the central theme.

De Castelbajac knew the rainbow serves as a symbol for gay rights, so when he presented his sketches to Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, then the archbishop of Paris, he recalled: “I told him: ‘You might find this transgressive. But for me, the link between man and God is the rainbow. It is the symbol of unity.’ Plus, I thought it was youthful, and there was no copyright to deal with. And he said: ‘That’s great. Let’s do it.’ ” Pope John Paul II approved, too. “The pope said to me, ‘You have used color like cement of faith,’” de Castelbajac said.

The pope donated the chasuble to Notre Dame, and it was displayed in the cathedral’s treasury, alongside such relics as the crown of thorns thought to have been worn by Jesus Christ at his crucifixion.

In 2018, the pope’s ensemble was lent to the Costume Institute at the Met for the exhibition “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.” During the Notre Dame blaze, the treasury’s items, including the pope’s vestments, were rescued by the fire brigade.

For the Notre Dame designs, de Castelbajac said, “I went back to the early days of my career, when I worked with simple materials, clean lines and color blocks.” He pulled out a fat blue felt-tip marker and drew a thick cross on a sheet of paper. “It’s very Mondrian, medieval and heraldic, like the designs you see on family crests,” he said.

De Castelbajac decorated the bishops’ robes with 12 small crosses, which represent Christ’s apostles, and he assigned each disciple a specific color. “Matthew was angrier, so his are red,” he said. “John was soft and spiritual, so his are blue.”

Other eye-catching items include a cope (a liturgical cloak) for Ulrich with quilted gold leaf crosses by Lesage; white silk miters emblazoned with large gold crosses by Maison Michel; and handsome

Christogram crosses in hammered and gold-plated metal by Goossens.

“I opened my heart and came up with this cross that symbolizes light, joy and hope,” de Castelbajac said.

“I wanted an epic work that speaks to the Middle Ages and the history of the cathedral, yet also speaks to the youth of today.”

Notre Dame’s clergy will wear his vestments during services for Catholic holidays and celebrations through Pentecost in June. Then each parish in Paris will receive a chasuble. As de Castelbajac turned to put the prototype away, he stopped to show off one more detail: a white cloth tag in the collar with black writing in his rounded cursive. It read: “Jean-Charles de Castelbajac for Notre-Dame de Paris.” “This,” he said, “is the most important label in my life.”