Pope Leo XIV named among Vanity Fair’s most stylish people of the year

American magazine Vanity Fair has included Pope Leo XIV in its list of the most stylish people of 2026. The pontiff was placed in the “The Originals” category — ten figures with, as the editorial team puts it, an especially eccentric and inventive approach to dressing.

The same category also features Icelandic singer Björk, Spanish performer Rosalía and director Spike Lee. The editors cited the head of the Catholic Church’s deliberately informal style as the reason for including him.

The reference is primarily to an image in which the future pontiff wears a modest cream-coloured outfit with Nike sneakers. The magazine noted that even on the papal throne, Leo XIV has retained his sense of irony and nonchalance: for example, he sometimes appears in public wearing a baseball cap.

The same image spread online after the release of the trailer for the Vatican documentary “Leone a Roma”, about Robert Francis Prevost’s life in Rome before his election. GQ magazine later described how social media users identified the exact model of the shoes.

This is not the first such mention for Leo XIV: in 2025, when he was elected, Vogue placed him on its list of the 55 most stylish people of the year, while The New York Times included the pontiff in one of its roundups.

At the same time, Catholic Herald pointed out an inaccuracy: in the photograph used by Vanity Fair, the pontiff is not wearing a cassock but a liturgical alb and chasuble. The Vatican itself did not comment on the pope’s appearance in the fashion ranking.