Designer Filippo Sorcinelli on dressing the last three popes – interview
Also a perfumer and organist, Sorcinelli says his work for Popes Benedict, Francis and now Leo is ultimately inspired by his Catholic faith
Yves Saint Laurent famously once said that fashion fades, but style is eternal. For designer Filippo Sorcinelli, who fashions garments for one of the world’s most revered religious figures, that statement carries even greater weight.
“I would never be able to do this job if I didn’t have faith,” Sorcinelli tells me through a translator, dialling in from his office in Mondolfo, a municipality located in Italy’s Marche region. “In my line of work, you can always tell who has faith and who doesn’t. It’s a very distinct way of working.”
Sorcinelli was only five years old when he was first drawn to religion, stepping foot inside a local church his mother was helping to clean and finding himself “fascinated by all the gold and art inside”. In the years since, his creative journey has been shaped, repeatedly, by his Catholic faith and what might even be termed divine intervention.
Sorcinelli was raised in a family of seamstresses and learned the art of tailoring early on, but actually started out as an organist in cathedrals as a teenager before a phone call in his early twenties, from a friend who was soon to be ordained as a priest, changed his life forever. He was inspired not only to make vestments for his friend, but to turn to crafting liturgical garments full-time. Thus, his atelier, LAVS – an acronym for the Italian words Laboratorio Arte Vesti Sacre, which can also be read as the Latin word for “praise” – was born.
Sorcinelli’s work has gone on to have a lasting impact on the style of the modern papacy – Pope Francis wore LAVS for his inaugural mass in 2013, and was dressed in a white silk and gold-trimmed mitre designed by the house for his funeral in 2025.
His designs look not to worldly considerations for relevance, defying the trends and seasons of traditional fashion, but have inspired imitators all the same. Their timeless quality is not just because of the figures who wear them, but also because they draw on centuries of history in their artistry – Sorcinelli frequently channels the Middle Ages in his work, drawn to how religion inspired the greatest artists and artworks of that time.
“It symbolises how strong the message is, that it can transcend fashion trends and always be ‘contemporary’, in a way,” Sorcinelli says of Catholicism’s hold on the public imagination. In recent years, interest has been heightened by high-profile events like the 2018 Met Gala, its theme inspired by Catholic dressing, and by the 2024 film Conclave.
