Some would say that fashion is a religious experience. Some would say the fashion elite bow before the cult of commodity with the fervor of the reborn.
I don't disagree.
Trolling through Pinterest yesterday, I stumbled across a shot of the Christian Dior show at Fashion Week. A bustled, graceful, elegant model struts down the runway with the conviction of someone who knows where she's going, swathed in yards and yards of lush fabric, which somehow doesn't hinder her progress through a bright white landscape.
And all I could think of was Nicholas Poussin's The Assumption of the Virgin, in which Mary, similarly garbed in folds of fabric, ascends into the heavens. She's surrounded by white clouds and columns, and a plethora of little putti who, it could be argued, sport just a little bit less in the way of clothing than the average runway model does.
The coloring of both images is so strangely similar. Mary in her signature red (the color of blood that symbolized humanity) and blue (the color of heaven), the red washed out in the light of heaven, and the blue rich and bold. I've analyzed that painting in my Hail, Mary lecture, so when I stumbled across this bold modernization, echoing its coloring so clearly, but with such a different purpose, I couldn't wait to put them side-by-side.
The question of secular religiosity is one to be tackled another day. But for now, it's hard to deny that a woman wrapped in scads of fabric is imbued with a sense of purpose.
Christian Dior Haute Couture SS 2005 from Sis Maxina on Tumblr
The Assumption of the Virgin by Nicholas Poussin