Christopher Kane

Ensemble, spring/summer 2017

This collection was based on the idea of a very religious, superstitious woman. She was into a lot of relics, a lot of symbols, a lot of spiritualism. The image on the T-shirt is Saint Christopher, who found a baby on the banks of a river, took it across and saved its life. The baby turned out to be Jesus. Saint Christopher is known for his good deeds and he’s the patron saint of travellers.

The white, oversized tee has been really hacked. It’s got beautiful charms, it’s got D-rings, it’s got large eyelets. It’s been sort of punked. It was a little bit about making this T-shirt fall apart and then putting it back together – like, I suppose, my relationship with being a Catholic.

It was part of my upbringing, but we tended not to go to church as much as we should have, and we used to lie a lot and said that we had been. Areas of Scotland are very Catholic and I had a grandmother, Granny Kane, who was very devout. From growing up in that environment, I’ve always been obsessed with personality cults, religious cults and movements. They’re captivating and often the people are quite peculiar. It’s a good character study for building a collection on. There are lots of amazing stories to tell.

Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination is at New York’s Metropolitan Museum from Thursday; metmuseum.org