OH, COME ALL YE FAITHFUL! FASHION, RITUALS AND RELIGIONS: DRESSING UP FOR SUNDAY BEST WITH ELETTRA SIMOS
text Elisa Carassai / photo Marco Lombardi
«When Elettra asked me to interview her about “Sunday Best,” the first thing that came to mind, besides my grandmother’s weekly trips to the local church, was ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful,’ episode 12 from the first season of Sex and The City. “Do you remember that episode from Sex and The City where Carrie runs into Mr. Big outside a church in New York?” I asked her. “I think we should set up our interview just like that. Dress up for church and attend mass or maybe just chat in a beautiful church on a Sunday afternoon.” Elettra went along weirdly, and we met a Sunday afternoon outside the Santa Maria del Carmine church in Brera, Milan’s religiously sciura-clad district. Unlike Carrie and Miranda, who delusionally found themselves spying on Mr. Big and his mother during mass, Elettra and I weren’t spying on any Catholic boyfriend, lover, or situationship, nor questioning ourselves on whether relationships nowadays were the religion of the nineties or in our case, of the 2020s. Yet, inspired by the beauty of the church and by our surroundings, while our fellow photographer snapped pictures of details of our ‘Sunday Best’ outfits, we sat down and found ourselves chatting about what Sunday Best truly meant to us, fashion as a religion, the rituals of dressing up, and much more. This is an excerpt of our conversation.
Elisa Carassai: Ciao Ele! How are you? Thank you for agreeing to do this crazy thing with me. I’d say let’s start from the beginning. What does Sunday Best mean, and why did you choose this theme? And also, why did you choose this dress for your Sunday Best look for this interview? Elettra Simos: Ciao Eli, thank you for agreeing to interview me! Before settling on this Sunday Best, I looked at my portfolio to find inspiration for the issue’s theme. Superficially, if one looks at all of my editorial and commercial works, one may think they are all connected by themes of novelty and sex. However, when chatting with a friend who doesn’t work in fashion, he made me notice that the themes that unite my works are disguise, dressing up, and non-practicality. This, therefore, brought forth the idea of exploring aesthetics for aesthetics’s sake and not comfort, and Sunday is the perfect day for this because it is the day of idleness, a day where people can relax. When women interpreted Sunday best in the past, it usually meant that they reserved the most beautiful dresses in the closet to go to church to show their wealth theoretically. Still, in my imagination, it is simply about wearing the best and most beautiful dress you think is important for the day. And well, why did I wear this dress? It is actually one of my favorite dresses. However I have never been a churchgoer since I was raised neither Catholic nor religious, and I know very little about churches, but I imagined that if had to dress a character in a movie to go to church, this is what they would wear».
L’intervista completa sul terzo numero di inCf Magazine
