[Portrait to read in the winter issue of têtu· magazine, available at your newsstands or by subscription.] The fashion designer Filippo Sorcinelli has been dressing the Vatican for two decades. A hallmark of this devout Catholic: he is also openly gay. We met him in his workshop.
Photography: Pierre Terraz for têtu·
The elegant sobriety of his black suit – “the most elegant and refined color there is” – and the tattoo-like line that traverses his neck clash with the opulence of his creations. In his workshop in Santarcangelo di Romagna, in the province of Rimini, where he has surrounded himself with about fifteen collaborators specializing in liturgical garments, Filippo Sorcinelli wields gold, Lurex, crystals, and silk to craft chasubles, palliums, stoles, and mitres intended for the pope and bishops. He has also launched his perfume house, whose names evoke Catholic religion: Relique, Neither the Day nor the Hour, or Pardon Me.
When he recounts his journey, Filippo Sorcinelli sketches the path of a self-taught designer inspired by the Catholic faith and fascinated by its imagery. He was born in 1975 in Mondolfo, a village perched on a hill overlooking the Adriatic Sea. It boasts no fewer than six churches for 11,000 inhabitants: a record, even in Italy! His favorite: Santa Giustina, a small Baroque building high in the town. “During my childhood, my mother would take me there to clean the hall every week, the designer recalls. She swept the floor of that church until the age of 77, and for me, it was among its walls that I discovered painting, architecture, and music.”
At 13, while rummaging in a corner of the apse, he finds the key that leads to the organ loft… It’s a revelation: quickly, he begins to accompany the priest to celebrate Sunday Masses. He then studied at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, in Rome, and during his vacations he became an organist in the cathedrals of Fano and Rimini.
Outfitter to three popes
In 2001, a phone call marks a decisive turning point in Filippo Sorcinelli’s life. A friend tells him that he is going to become a priest. “Instinctively, I told him not to buy anything at all because I wanted to dress him myself”, he recalls. He had never yet made a single cassock. Determined, he taught himself in his aunt’s small workshop: “I never asked anyone for anything. I simply worked hard, first for small parishes. After eight years of labor, I had the Vatican on the phone.”
Fifteen years later, the designer has already dressed three popes: Benedict XVI, Francis, and Leo XIV. The outfit of which he is most proud? Probably the first garment worn by the penultimate pontiff during the Mass celebrated just after his election, in 2013: a sober, cream-colored piece that would mark the pontificate of the Argentine Jesuit who sought to be simple and close to the people. But the one that gave him the most trouble was destined for a bishop whom he prefers not to name, because of his tastes for luxury: “He wanted a dress encrusted with coral recovered from the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is a very fragile material and difficult to work with. With my team, we spent nearly five months finalizing this commission.”
Gay and devout Catholic
His success, however, could have been halted by malice. If Filippo Sorcinelli has known he is gay since adolescence and considers his sexual orientation a part of his identity, he has always remained discreet about his private life. But in 2013, he was outed. “While my business was starting to do well, all the Church members received the same letter saying that the person who made their garments was gay”, he recalls bitterly. An accusation aimed, of course, at sidelining him: “It came from the competition; we are not very many in the field, so I have a pretty good idea of who did it”, he simply notes, without naming the person he suspects as the culprit. Yet this destabilizing attempt was in vain and, as surprising as it may seem, the designer asserts that he has never experienced homophobia from the clergy.
How does Filippo Sorcinelli manage to reconcile his faith, his craft, and his sexual identity? “In my life, I have had as much trouble integrating into the LGBT community as into the Church. Both sides reject each other with the same virulence”, he glosses over somewhat readily. The devout Catholic in him shows a very understanding stance toward the official dogma on homosexuality: “It’s a very complicated issue, because the Church tightly links the notion of a couple to that of procreation. Since homosexual acts cannot give life, they are still considered abnormal”, he explains, before arguing: “But homosexuals are no longer judged as such individuals.” Indeed, while he readily concedes that the Church remains a conservative institution, “especially abroad, for example in the parishes of Congo and Rwanda”. The fifty-something also highlights the progress made in recent years: in 2023, for the first time, Pope Francis made it possible for priests to bless same-sex couples, or even explicitly allowed transgender people to be chosen as godparents. Like sewing, the Church’s evolution is a matter of patience.
