He began dressing Pope Benedict in 2007 and designed more than 50 ornate and detailed robes for him. Sorcinelli’s striking designs stand out in the contemporary world of liturgical garments for his focus on the medieval style, reinterpreted through modern materials and contemporary technology. This year he celebrates 25 years in the sacred garments space. “I feel with greater clarity the responsibility of a work that belongs to the church even before it belongs to my own personal story,” Sorcinelli shares with Vogue today. “The sacred vestment becomes the visible language of faith… it possesses an immense symbolic force. The person recedes, and the sign emerges.”
Sorcinelli recalls meeting Pope Leo—then cardinal Prevost—in the small commune of Tolentino in Marche, central Italy, many years before his election. “I remember his composure, the calmness of his gaze, an inner sobriety already fully legible,” he says.
Each of the three pontificates he has dressed, Sorcinelli says, have had their own distinct style identities. “Benedict XVI embodied the doctrinal splendour of form; Francis brought beauty back to its pastoral essentiality; and Leo XIV seems to gather order, contemplation, and the Roman sense of the church into a figure of austere clarity,” he explains.
Designs for Francis reflected his humble personality, with garments inspired by Italian Renaissance painter Giotto’s medieval fresco cycles—especially those in Assisi, in a nod to the saint’s name he chose. He chose only simple and necessary jewelry, and plain pants and robes.
Pope Leo XIV Visits The Principality of Monaco.Photo: Getty Images
Pope Leo XIV leads the Jubilee mass of Marian Spirituality at St. Peters’ square in the Vatican.Photo: Getty Images
Sorcinelli acknowledges the liturgical garment as an important image for the Catholic faith today, but as “one of duality.” “[It is] both archaic and future-facing, evoking the continuity of tradition, authority, sacrifice, order, and transcendence. In an age dominated by the rapid image, the pontifical vestment imposes duration,” he says. So while the papacy isn’t immune to a trend cycle, per se, it does last a few generations or so.
