From The Guardian:
For the first time in a decade, Vanity Fair has released a best-dressed list. Featuring 70 names, the list ranks the most fashionable people in the world in 2026. The lineup includes the usual suspects spanning Hollywood actors and global pop stars but nestled among the Hollywood stars is an unexpected entrant. Pope Leo XIV.
The 70-year-old head of the Catholic church has been praised by the magazine for taking papal style “to heavenly heights”. His most memorable look? A simple white cassock styled with a pair of Nike trainers.
Vanity Fair’s style correspondent José Criales-Unzueta, who worked on compiling the list, said he and the team were impressed by the “innate Americanness” of the way the pope dressed.
The Chicago-born pontiff has carved out a style niche and garnered a loyal fashion following with his enthusiasm for both bespoke vestments and vintage fashion accessories. Alongside trainers, he prefers simple black oxford shoes to the traditional red papal slippers.
He wears a discontinued Swiss-made quartz watch, carries his own battered briefcase and in June 2025 popped a White Sox baseball cap over his papal cap for a general audience in St Peter’s Square. For more formal occasions, he turns to the Italian designer Filippo Sorcinelli, who also created liturgical vestments for the previous popes Benedict XVI and Francis.
The Catholic church, with its long mastery of symbolism and optics, is experiencing an uptick driven by gen Z. For Leo, being featured in a publication that its global editorial director, Mark Guiducci, has described as a “magazine about personalities” and that feels “like the pantheon” works well with the papacy’s own aim to position itself as a modern power.
“The world’s embrace of this pope has been stunning to me,” said Robert Orsi, a professor of religious studies at Northwestern University in Illinois. Orsi pointed to Leo’s criticism of AI and calls for peace as also speaking to gen Z.
Carol Richardson, a professor of early modern art history at the University of Edinburgh, said the pope, who has his own Instagram account, would be aware of his inclusion on the list. “He and the people surrounding him are very savvy,” she said. “The majority will think it’s fun. They will like the fact it has been noticed how busy he is, that he has to wear trainers to run around in. That he is working.”
The pontiff is listed in Vanity Fair’s “originals” division, a category of individuals commended by the magazine for being “the most outlandish and innovative dressers” with “a singular point of view”. Others on the list include the film-maker Spike Lee and the singers Björk and Rosalía.
Criales-Unzueta described the list as “an opportunity to showcase the way fashion and style are deeply embedded in culture and society” and that “style, good style, is a practice that is not reserved for celebrities or their stylists”.
