Fashion Theology

by Robert Covolo

What is fashion? Where does it come from? Why has it come to permeate modern life? In the last half century, questions like these have drawn serious academic reflection, resulting in a new field of research―fashion studies―and generating a rich multidisciplinary discussion. Yet theology’s voice has been conspicuously absent in this conversation. The time has finally come for theology to break her silence and join this decades-long conversation. Fashion Theology is the first of its a serious and long-overdue account of the dynamic relationship between theology and fashion. Chronicling the epic journey from ancient Christian sources to current developments in fashion studies, cultural theologian Robert Covolo navigates the rich history of Christian thought as well as recent political, social, aesthetic, literary, and performance theory. Far from mere disparity or quick resolution, Covolo demonstrates that fashion and theology inhabit a mutual terrain that has, until recently, scarcely been imagined. Covolo retraces the way theologians have taken up fashion across history, unveiling how Christian thinkers have been fascinated with fashion well before the academy’s current focus, and bringing these insights into the conversation with fashion the logic by which fashion operates, how fashion shapes our world, and the way fashion imperceptibly molds our personal lives . Within fashion’s realms reside some of life’s greatest the foundations of political power, the basis for social order, the nature of aesthetics, how we inhabit time, and the means by which we tell stories about our lives―challenges, it turns out, that theologians also explore. Fashion favors the bold; theology demands humility. Holding the two together,  Fashion Theology trailblazes an interdisciplinary path informed by a thoughtful engagement with the Christian witness. For those traversing this spectacle of unexpected crossroads and hotly contested terrain, the promise of fashion theology awaits with its myriad unexplored vistas.

Genres: Theology

216 pages, Hardcover

Published August 15, 2020

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine, nuanced discussion of the relationship between fashion and theology. Covolo shows that fashion is not independent of theology. Theologians have not been as silent about fashion, as has often been supposed, and their discussions go beyond accusations of fashion being trivial and being about vanity. Those discussed include Tertullian, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Kuyper and Barth.

In these excavations of theological discourse and fashion theory Covolo identifies several interesting interrelations. Fashion theology is much more than fig leaves!

[Holly · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a disappointment. The title is misleading; the book isn't actually about "fashion theology" but about fashion + theology, or, as Robert Covolo puts it, "five intersections" between the two: "tradition, reform, public discourse, art, and everyday life." You might as well see how "five [randomly chosen] intersections" connect fashion and nuclear energy. After all, both fashion and nuclear energy have involved a concerted struggle across generations to produce more cheaply something crucial to civilization; both involve a lot of equipment; both require a lot of water; both produce waste that threatens the well-being of the planet (aside from a cursory mention of a 1997 exhibition in Rotterdam of clothing sprayed with mold and then left outside to rot in the elements, Covolo doesn't deal at all with disposable fashion and clothing as trash, though both clothing production and clothing disposal are major threats to the environment; see https://earth.org/fast-fashions-detri... ); neither can be produced without something spinning, which is to say, without revolution. (More on revolution in a moment.)

So nuclear energy fashion "intersections" could be tradition, automation, hydration, waste, and revolution, and an exploration of those intersections would be every bit as valid as Covolo's slim monograph. And even though fashion's importance to the industrial revolution could easily be discussed in each of Covolo's intersections (once again, they are "tradition, reform, public discourse, art, and everyday life"), and the industrial revolution's effect on theology has been profound, Covolo does not mention the industrial revolution once. With all due respect: WTF?

That's a pretty damn huge intersection to overlook. But Covolo manages to miss a primary intersection between fashion and theology with a far longer history that industrialization, which is MISOGYNY. For centuries, both fashion and theology involved men telling women what to do while simultaneously exploiting and shaming women's sexuality. The term "modesty" is listed in the index as occurring eight times in the main text and five times in the notes, but at no point does Covolo offer more than a cursory nod toward religious strictures regarding female modesty in dress. Women have been subjected to religious requirements for modesty that men are free from for about as long as monotheism has existed. Men are not told by their religious leaders that they must dress modestly in order to avoid being "walking pornography." Men are not expected to cover their hair and/or their faces in order to be seen in public. Men are not told by their religious leaders that dressing immodestly invites rape to such a degree that they and not their rapists are responsible for rape when it happens.

These lapses about the ways fashion and theology intersect in gender and misogyny wouldn't be so egregious if Covolo hadn't dedicated the book to his "precious daughter," who once "turned a pillowcase into a gown fit for a queen," an act that "was the beginning of it all."

Dude, you have some serious work to do.

[Lisa]

I reallllly want this book buts it's so pricey?????!