Fashion designer says invitation to work on Notre Dame Cathedral’s vestments was ‘a calling’
PARIS — When Jean-Charles de Castelbajac watched as Notre Dame Cathedral burned in April 2019, he felt compelled to act somehow.
Returning home, the French fashion designer began sketching ideas, imagining the monument’s reconstruction.
So, when the Paris Archbishop’s emissary approached him to design the liturgical garments for the cathedral’s reopening next month, Castelbajac — a believer with personal roots with the church — felt the moment transcended coincidence.
“It’s a calling,” Castelbajac said, surrounded by some of the 2,000 colorful pieces for 700 celebrants at his Paris home. “To be called like that is synchronicity.”
The garments, often in thick off-white Scottish wool gabardine, blend his signature bold pop-art aesthetic with a reverence for the cathedral’s centuries-old legacy with medieval touches.
The unorthodox designs undoubtedly break with the richly embellished styles associated with the cathedral’s nearly 900-year-old liturgical garb. At their center is a large gold cross, accented by debris fragments of vivid color-blocked red, blue, yellow and green velvet.
In the latticed shadows of the medieval masterpiece that was Notre Dame de Paris, centuries of history unspooled: two calamitous world wars, bubonic plague, revolution, the sprawling, messy intricacies of daily life.
“It’s something that is exploded that reconstructs itself,” Castelbajac said, likening the dissipated shards coming together to the cathedral’s rebirth.
The commission was not subject to an open call. Instead, Castelbajac was handpicked by the Catholic leadership because of his history of designing for the church.
In 1997, he created the rainbow-colored robes worn by Pope John Paul II for World Youth Day in Paris, garments later enshrined in Notre Dame’s treasury as a relic. That connection carried a special weight during the fire.
“As I watched the fire, I was thinking, are the relics burning?” he said.
One of the most complex phases of the reconstruction of fire-ravaged Notre Dame de Paris is underway: the rebuilding of the cathedral’s famous spire.
For Castelbajac, 74, the memory of those two hours in 2019 spent watching the fire with his wife amid people praying on their knees still evokes both grief and determination.
“It was not Notre Dame burning. It was hope burning. It was spirituality burning. It was such an intense moment … I was thinking, what can I do?” he said.
The vestments, which will be worn in liturgies permanently — forever, as Castelbajac put it — carry a sense of continuity with his past work. The designs are a variation on the pontiff’s robes, infused with Castelbajac’s signature aesthetic: bright, almost childlike hues that evoke optimism.
Castelbajac’s fascination with color began as a child in a military boarding school in Normandy, an experience he recalled as stifling and gray.
“It was the absolute loneliness. It was colorless,” he said.
“Color was like my teddy bear, my transitional element in a world of conflict. Each morning, there was the stained glass in the church and the coats of arms in the refectory that filled my world with primary colors,” he explained.
This obsession would define his career, earning him a reputation as a provocateur in the fashion world. Castelbajac’s creations have dressed pop culture royalty for decades: Madonna in her teddy bear coat, Beyoncé in sequins, Rihanna in a Donald Duck costume. In collaborations with Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, he fused art and fashion.
The new, playful vestments might raise some eyebrows among traditional Catholics, but he has no doubt about the faith Notre Dame’s leadership placed in him.
“Maybe I have the trust of the archbishop,” he mused, reflecting on the “carte blanche” he said he received for his designs.
When the cathedral reopens on the weekend of Dec. 7-8, Castelbajac hopes the vestments will be viewed by the world as a testament to renewal and the “power of color” to heal and inspire.
Adamson writes for the Associated Press.
