Robert Covolo is a new voice in an emerging set of cultural theologians who set their frame of reference broadly within the Reformed tradition, with particular emphasis on theologians like Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, Karl Barth, and Herman Dooyeweerd (among others). Covolo’s book is a unique and vital contribution to the field of cultural theology as well as to the broader Reformed tradition. Cultural theology is a call to Christians everywhere to proclaim the good news of the kingdom in every sphere of life, through connecting matters of faith to matters of cultural and social development.

In Fashion Theology Robert Covolo guides the reader through a landscape rich with history, theory, and the every-day in an exploration of the relationship between theology and fashion. Like a well-prepared expedition leader, he maps five specific intersections, covers the ground of each in detail, and suggests the possibility of journeying beyond them. Covolo’s aim is first to demonstrate that theology and fashion have had a relationship for centuries, with theologians as far back as Tertullian engaging with sartorial issues, and then to nurture that relationship into the beginning of a vibrant conversation. This is not a mere comparative exercise and neither does Covolo pursue the lowest common denominator between the two; the author is clear in his commitment to keeping fashion and theology distinct from each other. Instead, this is a rich story of the interplay between two characters who at times are in conflict, and at times share aspirations. This is what the book sets out to do, and it is what the book achieves.

Covolo’s first two chapters are predominantly historical, beginning with fashion as perceived by the early church fathers. With the spotlight on Tertullian and Augustine, Covolo explains the birth of a theological engagement with fashion in which Augustine’s more culturally sensitive approach laid a foundation for Thomas Aquinas’s medieval virtues of temperance, prudence, and truthfulness along with an Aristotelian idea of distributive justice. As the scene shifts in Chapter 2 to the late Middle Ages and the Reformers, the reader is surprised to find that John Calvin took fashion seriously. Covolo demonstrates how Calvin’s commitment to liberty of conscience finds an outworking in the Dutch Reformed theology of Abraham Kuyper, along with a call to diversity and the suggestion of a distinctly Reformed style of dress. Karl Barth completes the historical overview with his connection between dark powers, the zeitgeist, and fashion. The first two chapters place the book squarely in the Reformed theological tradition, although this is never explicitly stated.

Covolo’s third intersection of fashion and theology focuses on public discourse. This dense chapter covers the ground of late modernity taking in the correlations between the rise of the male suit, the power of human reason, individualism, market forces, and the place of faith and fashion in the public square. Whether deliberate or not, this middle chapter sets up a conceptual space in preparation for the next stage in the journey, as Covolo begins to equip the reader with contemporary theological tools for approaching fashion in our own socio-historical context. Considering art as the fourth point at which fashion and theology meet, Covolo raises theological questions concerning art’s historical association with the Christian faith, the significance of beauty, and the problematic mass marketing of fashion as art and art as fashion. A highlight of this chapter, and perhaps of the book, is Covolo’s description of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2018 exhibition, Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination. His analysis demonstrates the ongoing relationship between fashion and theology, as well as the sharp divide in worldviews that dominate both. Here is the place where a substantive theology of fashion begins to emerge, with Covolo demonstrating from Protestantism that fashion as art can be understood as meaningful action, and that meaningfulness is theological. Having chartered into deep country, this expedition moves into its closing stages as Covolo relates fashion and theology to the idea of the narrative of the everyday. In so doing the author creates a christologically shaped theology of fashion with humility and transparency required from both partners.

As a comprehensive accumulation of the evidence for a historical relationship between theology and fashion, and a subsequent premise for the systematization of a theology of fashion, Covolo’s book is one of a kind. It is theologically astute, while at the same time being an exhortation to both theology and fashion to invest seriously in one another. The book is a generous conversation-starter, providing successive discoursers with an abundance of talking points to pursue. Fashion Theology combines historical, theoretical, and philosophical research with an extensive bibliography, detailed footnotes, and a Goldilocks use of illustrations, through which Covolo successfully initiates any interested reader into this new area of cultural theology. However, inevitably, Fashion Theology is weighted towards theology, specifically in the Reformed tradition. Readers not immediately familiar with this tradition may find the first two chapters dense and disorienting in the absence of any explicit delineation of a theological framework. At the beginning the author sets out to solve a mystery – the relationship between theology and fashion; yet because of the book’s theological priority there is a slight disparity between the information given about the two central characters in this mystery.

In some ways Fashion Theology is a journey that is better appreciated at the point at which our expedition leader leaves us, rather than at the start, because the Christological horizon we find in Chapter 5 throws the previous chapters into perspective. It is in Covolo’s account of the Christian’s call to be clothed with Christ that we understand why fashion and theology intersect where they do. In particular, the questions prompted by the book’s tantalizing final chapter pave the way for further specific Anglican study: for example, questions about the relationship between liturgical vestments, liturgical practice, and the pattern of Christ lived out in the community and public square. Fashion Theology challenges all people of faith, especially theologians, to take fashion seriously, and along with it the work of God in all aspects of creation.