Together with the blazing-red serge uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, there’s maybe no different official ensemble as immediately recognizable as that of the Swiss Guards, the elite cadre that has been safeguarding the pope for greater than 5 centuries.
A placing mixture of daring colours and Renaissance-inspired design, its signature blue, pink and mustard-yellow stripes create a vivid distinction. From the uniform’s high-collared doublet and tight-hugging jacket to its puffy sleeves and billowy pantaloons, all of it’s tailor-made with precision.
For nearly three a long time, the Swiss Guard uniforms have been crafted — each element overseen — by Ety Cicioni, 52, the Vatican’s head tailor.
These meticulously crafted uniforms shall be on full show as greater than 32 million pilgrims are anticipated to flock to Rome for the Vatican’s 2025 Jubilee 12 months celebrations. Throughout this time, plenary indulgences — religious pardons that religious Catholics imagine absolve them of temporal punishment for sins — shall be granted, with the pope, flanked by the Swiss Guards, main dozens of ceremonies and celebrations.
“We have hardly made an alteration to the uniform in additional than a century,” mentioned Cicioni, from his modest Vatican tailor’s atelier, tucked behind the Porta Sant’Anna fundamental entrance to Vatican Metropolis the place the Swiss Guard stand at consideration. “The problem has been to maintain the uniform the identical,” as sure supplies, materials and stitching methods have turn into out of date.
“It’s a must to draw every bit exactly and optimize the lower to scale back waste,” mentioned Cicioni.
Tailor to the guards — and the celebs
Wearing a crisp, fitted swimsuit, Cicioni glides by way of the atelier with sleek financial system of motion — previous spools of brightly colored thread on wall racks and underneath excessive rails the place half-finished jackets grasp like festive streamers.
Framed pictures of the tailor, his spouse and two youngsters with Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis attest to his greater than quarter century of Vatican sartorial service. This shall be Cicioni’s second time serving as tailor throughout a Jubilee yr, which comes each 25 years.
Annually, Cicioni and 7 different tailors within the store full 120 uniforms: 60 for the winter, 60 for the summer season. Each are product of top-quality wool sourced from Biella, a city within the northern Piedmont area famed for producing one of the best wool textiles on the earth.
Every uniform consists of 154 items of cloth, some hand sewn collectively.
Cicioni estimates his atelier has made greater than 3,000 Swiss Guard uniforms. Teams of a dozen or so new guards arrive thrice a yr: January, June and September. Candidates should be Catholic, single Swiss males aged 19 to 30, at the least 174 cm (5’8″) tall, and have accomplished navy coaching in Switzerland.
Right now’s model of the uniform dates again to 1914, when Swiss Guard Commandant Jules Repond studied work of the ceremonial and navy gown of the early sixteenth century, homing in on the kinds of the Medici and Della Rovere households who dominated Rome, and designing a uniform incorporating key components.
The winter uniform weighs over three kilograms, whereas the lighter wool summer season model nonetheless contributes to loads of sweating throughout Rome’s sweltering summers. To guard the stitching on the cape from sweat erosion, a niggling drawback, Cicioni added lining — his solely vital modification.
However Cicioni hasn’t solely created uniforms for the Vatican: he is additionally lent his experience to the film enterprise for papal-themed movies: The Younger Pope and The New Pope TV collection, each by directed by Paolo Sorrentino; The Two Popes by Francesco Meirelles; and The Pope’s Exorcist by Julius Avery.
“The one one I did not do was the Conclave,” he mentioned, including with amusing, “I am hoping to see it quickly and shall be watching the costumes very intently.”
Supplied the job with no trial required
Regardless of his years of stitching for the Holy See, Cicioni says main the Vatican’s sartorial workplace was by no means one thing he had envisioned for himself.
Hailing from a small coastal city on the Adriatic coast within the area of Abruzzo, Cicioni grew up with a mom who managed a dry cleaner and did small dressmaking repairs. With the craft within the household — his three sisters are dressmakers — he went to work for an alta moda atelier that was later acquired by Gucci.
Within the fall of 1997, an area man who labored for the Vatican requested him if he can be concerned with being interviewed to switch the Vatican’s head tailor, who was retiring.
“After I bought right here, they have been nonetheless utilizing old style foot-pedal stitching machines,” mentioned Cicioni. “I thanked them for the chance, however mentioned I labored in a unique realm and could not presumably do my job with such antiques.”
A month and a half later, he bought a name from the Vatican asking him what gear he wanted to do the job. He faxed them a listing and a half hour later they phoned to supply him the job, no trial required.
“I nonetheless do not know why I used to be chosen,” mentioned the religious Catholic. “I can solely assume it was the next energy at play.”
Cicioni’s spouse, Lucia Marcellosi, joined him within the atelier as soon as they married, a couple of years after he started on the Vatican. She works alongside Cicioni, at this time, chopping and stitching new uniforms for contemporary Swiss Guard recruits set to reach within the new yr.
Black market uniforms
The Vatican jealously guards the uniforms, banning their resale and permitting Swiss Guards to hold onto them solely after 5 years of service. Even then, the guards are required to signal a contract promising that upon dying, they may both be buried within the uniform or bequeath it to a Swiss affiliation of former Swiss Guards.
“They found the kids or grandchildren of Swiss Guards making an attempt to promote the uniforms on Ebay,” mentioned Cicioni. “So the Vatican purchased the uniforms again and applied the rule.”
Outdated uniforms that may’t be recycled are lower into small items, typically as a activity assigned to Swiss Guards as punishment for being late to their obligation.
Cicioni says he believes the Swiss Guard uniform will endure effectively into the long run, however he worries the type of endurance required to coach and nurture younger expertise in high-level tailoring is essentially a factor of the previous.
“Once we usher in a brand new particular person, it will possibly require years to know if they’ve what it takes,” he mentioned. “And if they do not, that is an enormous value when it comes to misplaced time and vitality. However it’s a must to take the chance if you need this craft to outlive.”
His true dream, he says, is to open a tailoring faculty, passing on the talents, secrets and techniques, and satisfaction which have formed his and his household’s life, to future generations.
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