All in a good gauze
Even before I saw who’d designed Melania Trump’s Vatican outfit I thought, “Well, someone’s really going for that Dolce & Gabbana Sicilian Widow look.” As for Ivanka – what was that? Audrey Hepburn meets Beyonce?
I’m sure the First Ladies meant only to be respectful when they donned those mantillas. However, the comehither mamma look of all those striking Dolce ads was possibly not what the Catholic Church had in mind when it recommended, around 1,800 years ago, that women cover their heads to pray.
According to catholicismpure.com the veiling of women before the Lord is partially so that congregants can better focus on God, but also, “a humble imitation of the angels’ behaviour, who when they sang the praises of God, and adored and glorified his perfections, covered their faces and their feet with their wings,” (Isaiah 6:2).
This compunction to cover a woman’s attractiveness is, of course, what makes veils, headscarves and wigs, worn in a religious context, so contentious. But bringing angels into it softens any potentially oppressive overtones. How Catholic to make the covering so decorative as well. One can’t help picturing Ivanka and Melania’s glee when they saw the attached protocol for this whistlestop tour of the world’s political flash points: no hijabs required for the meeting with King Salman et al in Saudia Arabia, him not being an official religious leader; lots of lovely lace on the table for Rome. The mood boards assembled in Trump Tower must have been quite something – The Godfather, Velázquez, a bit of Bardot in And God
Created Woman, plus a soupcon of Lady Gaga. And of course Dolce.
Vatiquette nerds may be interested to know that while donning a mantilla is something of a tradition among First Ladies, stretching back to Jackie Kennedy, who was a Catholic, and taking in Pat Nixon, Betty Ford, Michelle Obama and even Hilary Clinton, lately diktats have, under Pope Francis, been relaxed. A Vatican spokesman told The Telegraph this
week that there are in fact, “no hard and fast rules women must follow”.
Even so, modesty (long sleeves) and decorum (wearing black), have become a de facto uniform for high-profile female visitors to the Vatican, although in special cases, for Catholic royals, dispensation for white has been given.
Like all uniforms that stick, demure and black works. Angela Merkel skipped the veil when she visited the Vatican, probably wisely – this is a woman who knows her sartorial limits – but switched her customary brightly coloured suits for a black one.
Amal Clooney chose to wear a weird but strangely striking black turban instead of a veil, but also donned black.
No such veil dodging for the Trump women. Mantillas represent the K2 of fashion challenges but you can tell they were up for it. Get it right and the look is romantic, enigmatic, very flattering. Victorian women deployed veils to much the same effect that Botox and diffused camera lighting achieve today.
Until this week, no one outside a daytime soap – or a fashion shoot – ever looked quite like this when visiting Rome.
But then until this year, no First Lady outside a daytime soap ever looked like Mrs Trump.