Designer Vestments

Since it has refashioned the Mass, it was perhaps inevitable that the Roman Catholic Church would one day turn its attention to liturgical couture. An exhibit near Le Mans, France, last week featured sketches by two designers who were asked to envision something with "more presence, prestige and modernity" for priests presiding at altars of the future. No impious exercise, the designs were commissioned by a committee of bishops, priests and art historians; the designers consider themselves devout Catholics, and approached their task with missionary zeal.

Since Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and Andre Courreges are more or less avant-garde, one might be thankful that the offerings departed from their current fascination with four-sleeved sweaters or garish prints. Castelbajac may in fact have disappointed those who longed for something more controversial. His chasubles are translucent to splash bright colors on the white albs underneath, evoking the stained-glass windows of his boyhood memory. ("God was light," he recalls.) The outsize cross symbols are certainly traditional enough, inspired as they were by clothing that St. Louis wore during the Seventh Crusade. More outre, Courreges offered a white-and- silver jumpsuit with epaulets, just the thing for missionaries to Mars.

Reaction to the fashions, shown on French TV, was mixed. Jesuit Theologian Jean Michel welcomed relief from today's "dull and uninspiring" vestments- by-catalog. But a priest at the Paris chancery office saw new evidence of the "crisis in the West." Meanwhile, an old woman entering Notre-Dame cathedral was perturbed: "Why dress up priests as circus performers?"