KEY POINTS:
I lost my heart to a Peruvian rosary bead last Christmas. A gorgeous little trinket, the beads covered in fabric the exact shade of a favourite lipstick. That is a rich, joyous, not at all slutty, crimson. Each of the beads was shaped to form a perfect, tiny damask rose. It smelt like roses, too.
I saw it in a shop on a cobblestoned street in Lima as we schlepped past in search of ever more entertaining ways to be parted from our pesos. The beads were love at first sight, although I'd never been a collector. Despite the efforts of Madonna and Dolce & Gabbana to up their hip factor, as a guiltily lapsed Catholic they have mixed associations for me. Wearing a rosary is less of a style statement than a reminder of my humiliating inability to remember all five of the Glorious Mysteries, in spite of the years spent with a variety of nuns drumming the rudiments of basic Catholicism into me at St Angela's College. But this infinitely stylish rosary was something special.
My companion, a reality-TV producer, is similarly lapsed but had the jump on me. She's been collecting rosaries, along with all manner of Catholic arcana, for years.
The establishment was tended by a nun, a round-faced postulant who beamed at us serenely and blankly. Could sister show us the rosary, we asked in our execrable Espanol. Ciertamente! Is there only one in the shop? Sister smiled and opened a drawer to reveal a garden of rosaries. Does sister take dollars? You bet sister does ... US$200 later and we emerged laden with all manner of religiosity. We bought silver bracelets with pictures of the Virgin Mary dangling off them. I also got a wonderful framed Sacred Heart. But my favourite buy was some picture postcards of saints, their haloes liberally festooned with gilt.
What charmed me about these little pictures was how different the Peruvian versions of the saints were to the ones I remembered from childhood. The translation from one language to the other seemed to have altered not just their names but their personalities, and it was clear what side of the world got the party saints. Who wouldn't rather San Francisco Javier, a picturesque young man with a cap of curls and faraway gaze of pure piety, than boring old Francis Xavier the Jesuit teacher of my memory - good at winning arguments but dry as a stick? And how can our simple, plainly clad Virgins hold a candle to the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, floating on a heavenly firmament in a full length frock that would do Galliano proud, and a crown the size of Sacre Coeur? There are no half measures in Peru. And the same goes for spectacle. Latin Catholics like their icons massive, handsome, loudly coloured and glittery.
Happy as it is to recollect our afternoon blowout, I realise this account is probably deeply offensive to practising Catholics. People for whom rosaries aren't simply trinkets but instruments of devotion. For them the thought of a rosary being a mere bauble is simply wrong, the image of Madonna rocking around wearing prayer beads and little else constitutes an affront. Likewise pictures of St Anthony or the Blessed Virgin aren't campy kitsch, they're sacred and intended for worship. Of course we know this because they've said this, to Madonna and D&G and Sinead O'Connor and anyone else who has offended their religious sensibilities. As they have a right to do.
I'm weary of lip-curling secularism; whether you view organised religion as an opiate or not, the right to believe is as important as the right not to believe. It is interesting, though, and more than a little ironic, how in artistic terms the trajectory of Catholic iconography that stretches back to Fra Angelico and has its apotheosis in Michaelangelo's David is imagery that has been mined to rich reward by the sorts of people at whom the church traditionally baulks.
The particularly heady combination of physical beauty and pageantry that is at the heart of so many images from the canon of Catholic art, from the erotically martyred St Sebastian to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, appeals to artists fascinated by notions of sexuality, physicality, salvation and mortality.
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana's attachment to the Catholic heartland of Sicily makes it perhaps inevitable that some of the ritual and imagery of the religion would find its way into their work. Maybe D&G rosaries are best understood in that capacity. Taking the image of the Virgin Mary and screen printing it across the pelvis of a tight dress is a step up from accessorising with holy beads, however, and requires a new level of tolerance from people who pray to Our Lady. Should they have to suck it up? No, surely not.
Creativity, art and design depends on freedom of expression, but should be elastic enough to accommodate criticism. The ritual and spectacle that is integral to organised religion is a rich vein for artists and designers to mine, who will undoubtedly continue to do so.
I don't wear my crimson rosary, but I do display it. It is a miniature work of art and a lovely memory of the colourful Catholicism of Peru.
