UNUM: Perfumes for the Soul, Created by the “Pope’s Tailor”

“Perfume is one of the most complete sensory, mystical and spiritual experiences in our lives. That is why what matters to me is emotion and vibration, not necessarily a pyramid of notes. I entrust my artistic vision to a perfumer, who draws inspiration from my mood boards in the laboratory.”

— Filippo Sorcinelli

Essential Information
The Founder and the Origins of the Brand
What Matters to the Brand
The Fragrance Lineup
1. The UNUM Collection: The Core Line
2. The Délire de Voyage Collection
By the Way…

Essential Information

Founded　2013 (establishment of the UNUM project; the official timeline dates the first perfume to 2014)

Founder　Filippo Sorcinelli, with co-founder Marcello

Official website　https://filipposorcinelli.com/en/collections/unum

[Pronunciation] “UNUM” is Latin for “one” or “unity.” It is sometimes pronounced “Yoonum” in English-speaking countries, while the spelling and pronunciation “Unamu” are widely established in Japan.

[Brand Name] Around 2018, the name heading the brand shifted from UNUM alone to Filippo Sorcinelli, with UNUM becoming the name of a collection within that brand.

The Founder and the Origins of the Brand

1975: A Hilltop Village Overlooking the Adriatic

Filippo Sorcinelli was born on July 1, 1975, in Mondolfo, a small hill town in the Marche region of central Italy. The little town has a disproportionately large number of churches: six. Every week, his mother cleaned the floor of Santa Giustina, a small Baroque church on the town’s heights, and the young Filippo remained at her side, continually encountering its sacred space.

“Cleaning the local parish church with my mother as a child is an origin I will never forget. The vaulted ceilings, the art, the music, the incense: everything inside the church spoke to me with profound meaning. Faith, to me, is something human. Without that first step, I would not be who I am today.”

— Filippo Sorcinelli

From childhood, he was surrounded by a family of textile craftspeople. His maternal aunts and his sister ran a small tailoring workshop, and the setting in which their hands produced expensive tailoring and wedding dresses nurtured his later aesthetic sensibility. His father’s workshop was next to the room where he practised the piano, and the scent of freshly cut wood was always in the air. In later years, Sorcinelli would describe it as “one of my earliest olfactory memories.”

At 13, a Cathedral Organist

A turning point came when he was 13: he became a cathedral organist. The experience was like a revelation. He soon began playing the organ at Sunday Mass, supporting the clergy’s prayers through music.

According to the Italian-language Wikipedia, Sorcinelli served as organist at Fano Cathedral from 1989 to 1998, at the cathedral of San Benedetto del Tronto from 2007 to 2013, and at Rimini Cathedral, the Tempio Malatestiano, in 2012. Playing the organ at a bishop’s liturgy while still a boy was not only an honour, but also a great responsibility.

“Being a cathedral church organist at 13 was not simply an honour; it was a great responsibility. While friends my age were playing football or tag, I was asking someone to accompany me so that I could play the organ at the bishop’s liturgy. That changes the way you look at life.”

— Filippo Sorcinelli

After gaining a maestro d’arte, an arts-course qualification, at the art institute in Fano while also studying at the Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro, he won a scholarship in 1997 to attend the prestigious Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome. The boy’s hands crushing grains of incense, the old aromas rising from a church’s stone floor, and the rich chords released by a pipe organ would all become the spiritual foundations of UNUM.

The Birth of the “Pope’s Tailor”: The LAVS Atelier (2001)

In 2001, after returning from his studies in Rome, Sorcinelli received a telephone call that would change his life. An old friend was to be ordained a priest.

“Instinctively, I said, ‘Don’t buy anything. I’ll make it for you myself.’ I had never sewn a single vestment before.”

— Filippo Sorcinelli

Thus, the self-taught vestment making he began in his aunt’s small workshop led to the founding of LAVS: Laboratorio Atelier Vesti Sacre, meaning a “workshop for sacred garments,” while also playing on the Latin word for praise, or “laud.” Taking his mother’s words, “Think high. There is always time to go low,” as his motto, he studied Gothic and Romanesque art and continued making liturgical vestments with contemporary interpretations.

At first, he worked to fulfil orders from small parishes. Six years later, in 2007, the Vatican contacted him. Beginning with vestments for Benedict XVI, he went on to make the garments for Pope Francis’s inaugural Mass in 2013. LAVS produced at least fifty garments for Benedict XVI and at least twenty for Pope Francis. In recent years, he has also made garments for Leo XIV, the 267th pope, becoming known worldwide as the “tailor” to three successive popes.

There is more. Among Sorcinelli’s creations, one with particular significance is the white mitre, a bishop’s ceremonial headdress, worn by Benedict XVI’s body at his funeral. This mitre, too, was his work.

The Turn to Perfume: From the Custom of Scenting Vestments

At LAVS, there was a custom of always scenting completed vestments before delivering them to the Vatican. It arose from Sorcinelli’s desire to complete the act of making sacred garments through all five senses.

“At LAVS, it was customary to scent finished garments before delivery, because we believe our creations should be a sensory journey. This is where the UNUM project began: the desire to create a fragrance that could make our creations even more unique.”

— Filippo Sorcinelli

Together with his longstanding collaborator Marcello, Sorcinelli co-founded UNUM in 2013. In 2014, he officially introduced its first extrait de parfum, LAVS. Originally created as a room and clothing spray for the vestments of Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, the spray attracted such a response that it was transformed into a perfume to wear on the skin.

Under the concept of “olfactory tailoring,” UNUM thus became a brand through which music, painting, photography, architecture and religion, all the arts running through Sorcinelli’s own life, could be brought to the world in the form of fragrance.

What Matters to the Brand

The Philosophy of “Olfactory Tailoring”

The official website defines UNUM as follows:

“UNUM is about Spirit. Not only spirituality. Born from the awareness that Spirit crosses every boundary and embraces the pulsing life force of every people, UNUM wants to speak of that part within each of us. It wants to celebrate what cannot be touched. Freely and infinitely.”

— filipposorcinelli.com (official website)

UNUM is defined as “a lifestyle brand born from cross-fertilisation between the arts,” and its perfumes are positioned as tributes to Sorcinelli’s personal passions, including Gothic art, music, photography and fog.

As for the actual creation of the fragrances, Sorcinelli is not himself the nose, or perfumer. They are made in collaboration with an unnamed perfumer who understands his artistic vision and philosophy. In an interview, he said, “My work is to generate a coherent, free way of thinking. The perfumer is the bridge connecting those scattered gestures.”

“For me, the perfumer’s work is to create harmony between pain and love, like trees in a forest, on my behalf. The perfumer is a means, a bridge connecting the scattered gestures of my life.”

— Filippo Sorcinelli

All the creations are in extrait de parfum form, with a high concentration that allows for depth of expression. They are essentially unisex and aim to be “experienced as a space,” rather than simply to “smell pleasant.”

Bottle Design: The Aesthetics of the “Monolith”

UNUM bottles are known as black, rectangular “monoliths.” Their jet-black or metallic surfaces and linear, minimalist design embody Sorcinelli’s aesthetic conviction that “black is the miraculous colour that has enveloped my entire life.” One critic likened UNUM bottles to “natural forms at least a thousand years old, arriving from another age.”

The packaging design is known for its application of the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio. The statement that “the Fibonacci sequence, Kepler’s divine proportion, was used for everything, from the container and cap to the dimensions of the box” became a talking point among many fragrance enthusiasts after appearing in an interview.

Each creation’s box is wrapped in thick black paper and designed to feel “like opening a new chapter in an ancient, sacred book.” For some creations, the packaging is developed to the point of functioning as an art installation in its own right; see Notre-Dame 15.4.2019 below.

A Commitment to Materials

There is a particular love of materials closely connected with religious ritual: frankincense, myrrh, juniper berries, balsams, Eastern resins, precious woods, old leather, musk and golden amber. At the same time, as Rosa Nigra demonstrates, there is a willingness to incorporate the vocabulary of classic French perfume through rose-evoking accords, freesia, peach and artemisia.

The Fragrance Lineup

The official website lists more than a dozen creations under the UNUM collection name, including limited editions. As the description “monolithic collection” suggests, all its creations form a unified world. The following introduces the structure of the principal collections and representative fragrances.

The UNUM Collection: The Core Line

The UNUM collection is the core line, transforming Sorcinelli’s personal artistic, spiritual and emotional experiences directly into fragrance.

LAVS
Introduced in 2014, it was the collection’s first creation and remains its biggest bestseller. It is sometimes called “the incense of incenses.” Black pepper, cardamom and jasmine lead to elemi, labdanum, clove and coriander, while opoponax, oakmoss, amber and tonka bean create an aristocratic depth suggestive of incense. It began as a spray for scenting vestments. It is also among Sorcinelli’s most personally meaningful creations: “The fragrance I can never give up. It is my spiritual garment.”

Opus 1144
Introduced in 2015. The fragrance is dedicated to 1144, the year the choir of the Basilica of Saint-Denis outside Paris was consecrated, a moment symbolic of the birth of Gothic architecture. A vivid citrus opening deepens into a substantial oriental composition of jasmine, vanilla, sandalwood and styrax. It has the commanding presence of a grand diva and is highly regarded as a modern interpretation of the classic floriental, recalling Guerlain’s Shalimar and L’Heure Bleue.

Rosa Nigra
Opening with the Song of Songs verse “Nigra sum, sed formosa,” or “I am black, but beautiful,” this fragrance is dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. A rose-like scent makes its presence felt, yet the official description says that no rose is actually used. Rather than foregrounding the sweetness of the flower itself, it allows layered symbolism to emerge. Sorcinelli has said it was the creation that took the longest to make.

Symphonie-Passion
This creation arose from the experience of playing the organ at Rouen Cathedral, the same organ played many times by Marcel Dupré, the great organist of the early twentieth century. The title also comes from Symphonie-Passion, which Dupré improvised in 1921. “At the moment the music begins, the sound is steeped in wood and powder,” Sorcinelli says.

Ennui noir
Born from “the need to find oneself and beauty through the mists of solitude.” Accompanied by the words “Boredom, or ennui, is not emptiness but rich fulfilment. It is where humanity reflects on its own existence,” it is a horizontal fragrance seeking the essence of French melancholy.

but not today
Introduced in 2018. Inspired by Ridley Scott’s film Hannibal, which was also filmed in Florence, it takes as its starting point Hannibal Lecter’s question to Clarice: “Answer me, Clarice. If you love me, would you tell me to stop?” From a violent opening of bergamot, artemisia and lavender, it evolves over a long period into oakmoss, galbanum resin, amber and musk.

Quando rapita in estasi
A fragrance dedicated to the divine presence of Maria Callas as she sang the mad scene from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at La Scala in Milan in the 1950s. An opening of incense, cedarwood and lily of the valley develops into clove, peach kernel, incense resin, vetiver, tonka and labdanum.

Reliqvia
Its name comes from the Latin for “relic.” Its setting is the Baroque Church of the Cross, or Chiesa della Croce, in Senigallia, in the same Marche region as Sorcinelli’s hometown, where he serves as organist and as artistic director of the organisation. The story centres on a wooden statue of the dead Christ, shown to the public only once a year, and an altarpiece by Federico Barocci, both housed in the chapel built in 1608. It is described as “layers of incense and the scent of peat engraved by solemn, sacred years.”

né il giorno né l’ora
Introduced in 2023 as “the twelfth creation in the collection,” it confronts one of the most fundamental emotions: fear. Its inspiration comes from the parable of the wise virgins in the Gospel of Matthew, and its name is drawn from the passage “You know neither the day nor the hour.” The silver bottle is placed inside a black velvet bag and further sealed in shrink-wrap, which must be physically cut open with metal scissors supplied in the box. Its vision is so thorough that opening it becomes a performance in itself.

Lascia ch’io pianga
The eleventh creation, inspired by the aria “Let Me Weep” from Handel’s opera Rinaldo. It seeks to embody the concept of gaining freedom through individual human experience. Musical staves also decorate the bottle, carrying a story in which music pours down like tears and gives rise to the desire for freedom.

The Délire de Voyage Collection

Meaning “the delirium of travel,” this collection records in scent the places and events Sorcinelli experiences as a traveller and visitor.

Epicentro
Introduced in 2019 as the first creation in Délire de Voyage; another official source dates its creation to 2016. It is dedicated to the major earthquakes that struck Sorcinelli’s home region of Marche in 2016–2017, particularly the small mountain village of Bolognola, home to 138 people. The bottle is designed to look as though it stands on trembling ground, and its cap uses a faithful reproduction of a fragment of rubble from Bolognola’s town hall that Sorcinelli himself picked up on his first visit. Part of the proceeds was donated to help rebuild the village.

Notre-Dame 15.4.2019
Introduced in 2019 as the collection’s second creation. It is dedicated to the fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris on April 15 that year. As a trained organist with a special connection to the cathedral, Sorcinelli was allowed into parts of its interior closed to the public after the fire. He captured in fragrance what he experienced there: “smoke, water running down stone, light entering through holes in the ceiling, and the golden cross.” The cap is a “monolith of burned wood” recalling the moment of the fire, with the fragrance’s name nailed onto it. Opening the box causes four “wings” to fall outward, revealing small paintings Sorcinelli himself made with symbols and colours associated with Notre-Dame in Paris. Part of the proceeds went to support the cathedral’s choir through Musique Sacrée.

By the Way…

Sorcinelli also has a powerful physical presence. With his shaved head, abundant black beard and tattoos, always dressed in a well-tailored black suit, he has been described as “somewhere between a monk and the lead singer of a London punk band.” When speaking about himself, he almost invariably emphasises black.

“Every colour now feels like an intrusion to me. Black alone is the colour of universal poetry.”

— Filippo Sorcinelli (in an expression of affinity with Yohji Yamamoto)

He is also openly gay while remaining a devout Catholic. There is an account of letters circulated by competitors to church figures in 2013, just as his atelier began to grow successfully, revealing his homosexuality. Sorcinelli says, however, that he ultimately experienced no homophobia at all from the clergy. His words, “In my life, I have been equally unable to fit into the LGBT community and the Church. Both reject each other with the same intensity,” convey the depth of the contradictions he has experienced.

In 2015, the town of Santarcangelo di Romagna awarded him a Benemerenza Civica, a civic honour for artistic achievement, and in November 2025 he was granted honorary citizenship of Bolognola.

When asked about his earliest olfactory memories, Sorcinelli answered:

“First, the scent of grains of incense I crushed as a choirboy. Then the smell of freshly cut wood in my father’s workshop, next to the room where I practised the piano.”

— Filippo Sorcinelli

These two memories, church incense and the wood of his father’s workshop, may be the origins of every fragrance that resides within the brand called UNUM.

References