You're looking divine today, Father...

The Church is updating its image for a special occasion with the help of luminaries from the fashion world, writes Ian Phillips

In the Seventies, French fashion designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac created clothes for Charlie's Angels. For years angels of the winged, celestial variety have also been very present in his work. They often turn up on outfits in his collections or on the furniture he designs and he regularly draws them in chalk on the walls of Paris. Now, instead of putting religious icons on clothes, he is designing clothes for a religious icon - the Pope. From August 18th to 24th, 400,000 young Catholics, 5,000 priests and 500 bishops will gather in Paris for International Youth Week. The highlight of this celebration of faith will be a mass held on Longchamp Racecourse during which John-Paul II will baptise 10 young Christians (two from each continent). The scenery for the event has been created by leading architects Christian de Portzamparc and Jean-Michel Wilmotte; the music will be orchestrated by the former head of the Paris Opera, Myung Wha-Chung; the objects for the Communion are the brainchild of designer Sylvain Dubuisson; and the he liturgical vestments for all the clergy, including the Pope, have been designed by Castelbajac.

A spokesperson for the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, says Castelbajac was chosen because: "He knows how to make things which are at the same time classical and young. He is also a quite extraordinary colourist and structures clothes with originality, but without extravagance. You couldn't imagine the Pope dressed like a cosmonaut or an erotic dancer, which other designers may have tended to do."

Castelbajac is also manifestly religious. In his design studio's reception is a chair with an angel wearing a pink sweater on it. There is a cut- out angel in prayer on the wall, and in his office there is an oil painting of a monk, an icon of the Virgin and Child and a teddy bear with angel wings.

Downstairs in the studio, the vestments are being made. An employee is trying on one of the simple white capes which Castelbajac has designed for those who will be baptised. It will be placed over a black cape after the baptism to symbolise the passage from the dark to the light. The chasubles for the priests and bishops are hanging on rails. Each is made from undyed wool gaberdine. Those for the priests have a single band of colour and an open black cross inscribed on them, while the bishops' garments bear a rainbow-coloured scarf and a white cross.

The Pope's own clothes are, however, being kept firmly under wraps until the big day. What Castelbajac does reveal is that they will be "very simple" and in a "very clear, luminous, intense white. The colour will be much more in little touches - like a constellation". Beads have been sewn on by ace embroiderer Francois Lesage, whose clients are more habitually the Chanel and Dior haute couture studios.

It is not the first time Castelbajac has been asked to design for the Church. Eight years ago he created multi-coloured vestments for prison chaplains and claimed that religion has always influenced his fashion. "I have used the same minimalistic T-shape as liturgical clothing for 30 years. And the inspiration of the colours of stained-glass windows has been very important to me," he says.

"Fashion being a universal language today, I think it's good that the Church uses it for its message of faith," he adds and says he believes that the present venture could mark the renaissance of a collaboration between artists and the Church.

The Church seems to agree. "We hope this will give other designers the desire to come up with their own propositions for religious clothing," says the Archbishop of Paris' office. Mmmm . . . the ideas of Jean-Paul Gaultier or Vivienne Westwood could be pretty interesting!