The water was ankle-deep, cold enough to make the models hesitate. In Paris, at Rick Owens’ Spring Summer 2026 Temple show, they descended stone steps and tread into a shallow basin; its glassy surface disturbed only briefly by their unhurried passage.
In the water, hems darkened, fabric – recycled nylon, industrial rubber, hefty leathers – clung, silhouettes shifted in real time. It was impossible not to think of a baptism. Something ceremonial was happening in the fountains of the Palais de Tokyo. Not metaphorically, but literally: an altering of state. In a year already heavy with religious symbolism, Owens’ gesture felt like the season’s thesis statement.
Across 2025, designers and artists returned to the visual language of the divine: crosses and choirs, clerical collars and vestment-like robes, prayer beads, incense and pagan symbols. The timing felt telling – especially as the world quite literally turned its eyes to the Vatican last May for the election of a new Pope – an ancient ritual unfolding in real time, streamed and dissected across the globe (and in cinemas, via the Oscar-winning film Conclave).
Pop culture, too, had been quietly preparing the ground. Chappell Roan performed at the 2025 MTV VMAs dressed as religious martyr Joan of Arc – complete with crossbow and flaming castle gates. After a four-year hiatus, Lorde returned with her fourth studio album, Virgin, invoking the symbol of the Madonna – purity, devotion, and the uneasy power of being made sacred. And in November, Rosalía’s operatic masterpiece LUX built on the movement like a procession – braiding Catholic iconography with classical music and operatic vocals.
“It was a reminder that religious histories are not monolithic, and that women have always negotiated faith on their own terms.”
It’s a trend that’s not necessarily novel – we’ve had a reverent fascination with theology for years. We’re still under the spell of Fleabag’s Hot Priest and his devastating two-word dismissal, “It’ll pass,” even as we fall for Adam Brody’s emotionally intelligent rabbi in Netflix’s wildly popular Nobody Wants This. And every year, in the lead-up to the Met Gala, the internet nostalgically re-crowns its most beloved era: 2018, the year of Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination – enamoured in particular with Rihanna’s ornate papal gown, cape, and mitre, from the hand of John Galliano for Maison Margiela.
On the runway, divinity has shown up even in the smallest details. At Willy Chavarria FW25, pearl rosary beads, crosses and Sunday Mass-style suits appeared as both prayer and protest; an exploration of the Chicano experience. British-Nigerian designer Tolu Coker had Yoruba spiritual beads draped over garments, and placed wooden prayer beads directly into her models’ hands at London Fashion Week. And at Dior’s last Cruise show – held in Rome in the gardens of Villa Albani Torlonia, in what would be Maria Grazia Chiuri’s final collection for the House – the show closed with beaded trompe l’oeil gowns that recalled archaic saintly statues; stone rendered malleable. There were echoes of Joan of Arc again, of votive offerings, of armour and fragility coexisting. Chiuri has long championed the power of femininity – and this exit felt fittingly devotional.
At Australian Fashion Week, Bianca Spender staged her SS25 show under the cavernous white ceiling of a literal church, St. Barnabas. Show notes left on seats referenced the theme of “catharsis” across the collection – and staged beneath white vaulted ceilings, the chapel doubled neatly as a confessional.
Elsewhere, the divine turned its gaze from upward to inward. Gabriela Hearst’s SS26 collection drew explicitly from tarot, a meditation on the Lady Frieda Harris deck (which dates back to the late 1930s). Each look echoed the Major Arcana – The Fool, The High Priestess, The Star. A suede and knit gown bisected with braided leather rope: The Hanged Man. A dress fashioned from more than two thousand leather flowers: The Empress. The show was even walked by Laura Dern herself – and what could be more divine than that?
That same instinct animated Max Mara’s recent dedication to Madame de Pompadour for SS26. Pompadour, famously, left the convent only to become one of the most influential women in France, a patron of the arts and a supporter of the Enlightenment who helped enable the creation of the first French Encyclopedia – much to the Catholic Church’s fury. In creative director Ian Griffiths’ hands, her story became a study in divine rebellion: nodding to Rococo-era ruched gauze and Sèvres-inspired florals a balance of restraint and defiance. It was a reminder that religious histories are not monolithic, and that women have always negotiated faith on their own terms.
“In fact, despite the church’s insistence that the physical self, earthly desire, or human limitation disrupt spiritual intimacy, fashion is proving that the body isn’t what stands between you and the sublime; perhaps it’s the only way to get close.”
And of course, Giorgio Armani’s SS26 show in Milan became a spiritual homage in the most literal sense, framed as a tribute – almost a service – to the late designer himself, and unfolding under the guiding hands of Ludovico Einaudi at the piano.
What unites these disparate moments is a collective hunger for meaning and purpose. Fashion’s devotion is not related to dogma. This is not a return to organised religion, nor a simple aesthetic cycle. It is something messier: a negotiation with power, history, trauma, and beauty. Designers are not asking us to believe in God. They are asking us to believe in something – in ritual, in craft, in transformation – at a time when our spiritual vocabulary feels increasingly diminished.
Fashion, unlike so many other cultural forms, sits directly on the body. It knows weight. It knows friction. The way a cross necklace presses into skin. How a robe might restrict movement. Or a bead warms in the palm. Belief, here, is not abstract. In fact, despite the church’s insistence that the physical self, earthly desire, or human limitation disrupt spiritual intimacy, fashion is proving that the body isn’t what stands between you and the sublime; perhaps it’s the only way to get close.
Experience the Sublime issue in its entirety this March, available on newsstands from Monday 9 March 2026, and through our online shop. Find a stockist near you.
