Filippo Sorcinelli: Meet the gay couturier behind the Pope’s wardrobe

Filippo Sorcinelli doesn’t work the fashion circuit. His clients don’t sit front row, and his designs don’t walk runways. His work appears at the altar, under the dome of St. Peter’s, in front of a global audience of millions.

Italian artist Filippo Sorcinelli makes papal vestments for the Vatican

An Italian artist and founder of the liturgical atelier LAVS (Laboratorio Atelier Vesti Sacre), Filippo creates handcrafted vestments for the Catholic Church’s highest ceremonies. He is a couturier but with a theological brief and a two-thousand-year legacy looking over his shoulder.

Filippo rose to prominence during the papacy of Benedict XVI. He designed dozens of vestments that reflected the pope’s taste for historical richness and traditional detail. When Pope Francis took over in 2013, the aesthetic direction shifted sharply. Francis was a symbol of humility and restraint, and Filippo responded with simpler silhouettes and lighter fabrics. His atelier continues to produce pieces for Vatican liturgies today, making him one of the unseen designers shaping the Church’s public image.

Filippo was born in 1975, and trained in sacred art and music before moving into liturgical design. His atelier produces chasubles, stoles, mitres and altar textiles using traditional Italian silks, fine wool and intricate hand embroidery. He is also openly gay and a practicing Catholic, a fact that became public during an attempt to discredit him early in Francis’s papacy. The work, however, never stopped.

Outside the Vatican, his creative life is expansive. He is a trained organist and a visual artist working across photography and installation. He also founded UNUM, a niche fragrance line inspired by the sensory atmosphere of sacred spaces—incense, stone, wood and wax translated into scent.

What makes Filippo’s story stand out is where it unfolds. His work exists inside one of the world’s oldest institutions, where clothing is not fashion in the conventional sense but a language of ritual, authority and symbolism. Quiet, precise and deeply rooted in craft, his influence is felt every time the Church steps in front of the world.

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