`Giorgio Armani Designs Vestments with Olive Motif for Sicily Bishop - Olive Oil Times
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Giorgio Armani Designs Vestments with Olive Motif for Sicily Bishop

By Lucy Vivante
May. 9, 2011 11:10 UTC

Pantelleria, the Sicilian vol­canic island that is closer to Tunisia than it is to Italy, has a new church and the bishop of the dio­cese has new vest­ments, cour­tesy of Giorgio Armani. The Milan-based designer has had a vaca­tion house on Pantelleria for close to 40 years and obliged Monsignor Domenico Mogavero’s request for the design and dona­tion of vest­ments.

In response to crit­ics ques­tion­ing the lux­u­ri­ous nature of Armani vest­ments, Bishop Mogavero said, ​“It isn’t a ques­tion of world­li­ness, but a way of involv­ing a cre­ator of fash­ion, who loves Pantelleria, and it’s a way of valu­ing his orig­i­nal­ity and sense of beauty in the ser­vice of mass, and there­fore of God.”

Bishop Mogavero pre­sides over the dio­cese of Mazara del Vallo, a port city of Sicily con­nected to Pantelleria by ferry. Last week the bishop offi­ci­ated at the bless­ing of the Pantelleria church’s new fore­court and wore one of the four sets of vest­ments designed by Armani. Ensembles were cre­ated in each of the litur­gi­cally impor­tant col­ors of white, red, green, and vio­let.

Because of the rel­e­vance of the sea to the dio­cese, the vest­ments are embroi­dered with sea life such starfish, scal­lops and sea­weed. What will most inter­est read­ers of Olive Oil Times, how­ever, are the olives on the mitre. The sprays of olive branches with fruit are embroi­dered in golden thread. One spray stands ver­ti­cally at the cen­ter of the mitre and two oth­ers are placed hor­i­zon­tally at the band of the head­piece.

Olive trees and olive oil are highly sig­nif­i­cant in Catholicism. The name Christ comes from Greek word mean­ing anoint, and the oil used in church ser­vices is known as chrism. It is a mix­ture of olive oil and scent, usu­ally bal­sam. The olive oil mix­ture is used from the sacra­ment of Baptism to the final sacra­ment of Extreme Unction. Church bish­ops on Holy Thursday, a day in Lent, con­se­crate chrism, and this makes the Armani mitre iconog­ra­phy espe­cially fit­ting.

Pantelleria is a wind swept island and the olives, mostly the bian­co­l­illa cul­ti­var, are bent low from the con­stant pound­ing of the wind. Biancolilla refers to the color – white pur­ple. The olive oil is mostly extracted in September and tastes of tomato and arti­choke. Pantelleria olive grow­ers formed a coop­er­a­tive in 2006, the Consorzio olivi­coltori di Pantelleria. Their site says that a clas­sic bian­co­l­illa olive tree is not over a meter in height, but can ​“crawl” out­ward an amaz­ing 100 meters. The wind is most inju­ri­ous in the spring when the trees flower and attempt to set fruit. Unsurprisingly, the cul­ti­var is known as a good pol­li­na­tor.

Giorgio Armani uses olives in the men’s scent called Armani Code Summer. In addi­tion to olive leaves, it’s made with berg­amot, grape­fruit, lemon, neroli, rose, tar­ragon, cedar, amber and other ingre­di­ents. Sicily is famous for its cit­rus, and just maybe the inspi­ra­tion for the scent came from Armani’s sum­mer­house in Pantelleria.

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