Sorcinelli is an Italian artist himself, who hails from Mondolfo in the Marche region and grew up in a family of weavers and seamstresses. As well as making vestments, he is also a perfumer, photographer, and painter. At 13, Sorcinelli became an organist in cathedrals through Fano, Rimini, and San Benedetto del Tronto. He went on to study sacred art and historical weaving at the Museo del Tessuto in Prato. In 2018, the Diocesan Museum of Milan held a retrospective of his work, and in 2021, he received the Art and Liturgy Prize for innovation in the field of sacred vestments from the Pontifical Liturgical Institute.

Today, Sorcinelli is a tall, handsome, tattooed gay man who dresses in chic, sharp suits, draped shirts, and work pants—all black. His atelier is in a village called Santarcangelo di Romagna in Rimini. Faith has long been a part of his life. “I always carry in my heart my first steps as a child: I used to accompany my mother to clean the parish church in my hometown,” says Sorcinelli. “These simple and humble gestures actually held a great meaning and became the signature of my life. It’s easy to imagine the curiosity of a child inside a large ancient church, full of stimuli, artistic matter, faith, fabrics, incense, and music…everything spoke powerfully in one direction: Beauty.”

Photo: Atelier Lavs

Photo: Atelier Lavs

“To have faith, for me, is to have benefited from this human richness. Creating sacred art today means giving this message to the world. I couldn’t say I’m alive today if I hadn’t experienced those moments.”

In 2001, when he was 23, Sorcinelli received a phone call from a friend he hadn’t heard from in a long time. He informed Sorcinelli that he was to be ordained as a priest. “I instinctively said, ‘Don’t buy anything, I want to design your first vestment myself!’” he says.

“Immediately, I recalled those childhood moments of opening the drawers in the sacristy, and I decided that the style which best represented me came from a powerful historical period: the Middle Ages—architecture, sculpture, painting. This period has a deep-rooted culture of symbolism, form, geometry [and] it avoids the temptation of mere decoration.” The Archbishop of Genoa wore one of his designs in a televised service in 2003, which sparked a flurry of orders across the Catholic liturgy worldwide. Today the atelier runs mostly on commissions.