Nebbia: Wearing Fog, Filippo Sorcinelli’s Poetic Perfume Brand

“NEBBIA is a garment for boundaries, a covering for vanished borders and uncertain steps. It blurs the different ages of life, veils thought, and makes us lose the solemnity of a common-sense perspective. NEBBIA is a portrait of air moving within mystery, a quiet thrill passing through a downcast heart, an insubstantial noise running through a rarefied, malleable, floating parallel world of emotions.”

— Filippo Sorcinelli

Basic Information
The Founder and the Origins of the Brand
The Brand’s Distinctive Approach
1. “An Atmosphere of Emotion”: The Philosophy of Scent
2. Bottles and the Philosophy of Fog
The Fragrance Lineup
1. The Nebbia Series (2017): A Trilogy of Fog
2. The Pioggia Series (2022): A Trilogy of Rain
By the Way…

Basic Information

Year founded: 2017

Founder: Filippo Sorcinelli

Official website: filipposorcinelli.com

The Founder and the Origins of the Brand

A Boy Born in a Town of Fog

Filippo Sorcinelli was born on July 1, 1975, in Mondolfo, a small hilltop town in the Marche region of central Italy. Only a few kilometers inland from the Adriatic, fog fills the valleys and blurs the outlines of olive groves. This landscape may well be connected to the image of “fog” that the Nebbia brand would later embody.

Childhood impressions lie at the root of almost all his later creative work. At five, visiting the local church with his mother, Filippo was overwhelmed by the scent of incense, the beauty of liturgical vestments, and the resonance of the pipe organ. At the same time, his aunt, a tailor, introduced him to sewing and embroidery. Immersion in these three sensory worlds of sound, cloth, and scent would shape his life.

An Organist at Thirteen

It was in music that Filippo showed remarkable precocity. At thirteen, he became organist of Fano Cathedral, later serving in the same role at the cathedrals of Rimini and San Benedetto del Tronto. He subsequently described the experience as follows.

“Playing the organ in a cathedral at thirteen was not simply an honor, but also a great responsibility that meant setting aside the normal activities of a child. While my friends were playing football or hide-and-seek, I was asking someone to accompany me so I could play the organ at the bishop’s liturgical celebrations. It was an experience that changed the way I saw life.”

He subsequently honed his skills at the Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro and completed his musical training at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome. Alongside this, he obtained the Maestro d’Arte qualification marking completion of an art course at the art institute in Fano. The overlap of these three worlds, art, music, and the church, formed the person Filippo Sorcinelli would become.

From Vestments to Perfume: The Path to the Brand’s Birth

Around 2000, Filippo handmade a vestment for a friend who was preparing to enter a religious order. This became a turning point, leading him to establish the LAVS atelier in Santarcangelo di Romagna in 2001. LAVS is an acronym for Laboratorio Atelier Vesti Sacre, a workshop for liturgical vestments, and also evokes the Latin word for “praise,” laus.

The atelier established a reputation that led it to make garments for successive popes, including Benedict XVI, Francis, and Leo XIV, as well as many cardinals. In fulfilling commissions, Filippo had a habit of enveloping the finished liturgical vestments in scent before shipping them. This practice of “giving garments a scent” opened the way to perfume creation.

“For us, scenting the finished LAVS pieces is customary. We regard our work as a journey full of demands on the senses. The origins of the UNUM project are rooted in this idea: the need to create a scent that could distinguish our creations.”

Filippo, whose perfume business is described as having begun in 2013, established the perfume brand UNUM with his collaborator Marcello and, according to the official website, released the first fragrance in 2014. With themes of Gothic architecture, sacred music, and the spirituality of the Vatican, the perfume collection attracted the attention of niche fragrance enthusiasts around the world.

Arriving at the Theme of Fog

While UNUM explored Gothic and religious themes, Filippo’s gaze turned toward natural phenomena, emotions, and poetry. In 2017, Nebbia, an independent brand dedicated to the meteorological phenomenon of fog, or nebbia, was born.

Fog was by no means an accidental subject for Filippo. Winter fog drifting over the hills of Marche, the smell of rust in the morning mist by a river, the presence of damp greenery among the trees: sensations of nature he had known bodily since childhood lie at the heart of this brand. The official website describes it as “a collection of scents inspired by his own poems and paintings,” positioning Nebbia not merely as perfume but as a group of works continuous with Sorcinelli’s poetry and painting.

“None of the perfumes could exist without music. They contain all the forms in which I want to express myself: photography, art, music, painting.”

— Filippo Sorcinelli

The Brand’s Distinctive Approach

“An Atmosphere of Emotion”: The Philosophy of Scent

All Nebbia works bear the collection name “Atmosphere d’Emotion.” Translated as “an atmosphere of emotion,” the phrase succinctly expresses the experience Nebbia seeks: the idea that perfume is not a cosmetic but the very phenomenon of emotion rising into the air.

Filippo says of his perfume creation that “emotions and vibrations matter more than pyramid notes.” He gives his artistic mood boards to a perfumer, or nose, to translate into olfactory language. The nose remains undisclosed and is positioned as the artisan whose role is to embody Filippo’s artistic vision.

Each work in the Nebbia series is accompanied by a short prose text appealing more to poetry than to logic. Rather than “an explanation of a perfume,” it is “a poem inviting you into a landscape of scent,” strongly reflecting Sorcinelli’s identity as a poet.

Bottles and the Philosophy of Fog

Nebbia’s packaging design thoroughly reflects the brand concept. The original bottles used cotton in their caps, allowing “fog” to be experienced directly as a material. Even more noteworthy is the effect created when the bottle is shaken: the liquid turns milky, as though fog were gathering inside the glass. More than a mere theatrical flourish, it means the experience of fog begins before the perfume is “worn.”

The bottles redesigned in September 2025 have a more refined, luxurious finish, with caps sculpted to resemble flowing magma. As the presentation explains, “Curves like cascading magma create forms like atmospheric phenomena, becoming symbols of ceaseless change.” Their contrast with the simple shape of the glass bottle produces a presence reminiscent of a contemporary art installation.

The Fragrance Lineup

Nebbia’s works belong to the “Atmosphere d’Emotion” collection. Here we introduce six in total: the three fragrances of the 2017 Nebbia, or “fog,” series, and the three Pioggia, or “rain,” fragrances added in 2022. The full collection on the official website lists four further works themed around wind, for a total of ten. All are offered as 50 ml extraits de parfum.

The Nebbia Series (2017): A Trilogy of Fog

Filippo Sorcinelli’s first three releases interpret the phenomenon of “fog” in three different forms. Although they address the same theme, their olfactory expressions are entirely distinct.

Nebbia Fitta: “Thick Fog”

The official website’s text for the work reads: “Along the river, iron and stone are immersed in oxygen. Nothingness becomes a dusty existence, attempting a journey into the impossible. Bring your hand closer, close your eyes, and listen in the silence that surrounds you…”

Beginning with amber and patchouli, it cloaks itself in the scent of precious woods before sinking into an accord of damp earth. Earth, iron, moss: it expresses the pull toward the primordial felt by a person standing in fog, weightily yet without oppression.

Nebbia Densa: “Dense Fog”

“The extension of a branch fallen on damp moss, uncertain steps pushing through trees that move a mysterious cathedral without a horizon… The breath of everyday life is lost, and thin clouds reshape the forms.”

Vetiver and sandalwood form a tranquil framework, while botanical musks and palo santo, the sacred wood of South America, add depth. A dew accord rounds out the base. Filippo’s own text also accompanies the work: “And in a faint anguish, closing its eyes in a rare light, it tries to breathe. This infinite being wishes to locate itself with the scent of a moment.”

Nebbia Spessa: “Deep Fog”

“In the invisible sea we sail, mixing momentary fear with convulsive pleasure, moving the shifting boundaries of the self between salty revulsion and sensuality.”

A unique composition of marine lichen, aquatic notes, and a dew accord is overlaid with a salty expression. Without the weight of woods or amber, it combines the lightness of mist floating on water with the dampness of the seashore.

The Pioggia Series (2022): A Trilogy of Rain

In 2022, the Nebbia collection expanded with Pioggia, a series themed around “rain.” From fog to rain, it reframes transformations of the same water through different emotions.

Pioggia Debole: “Light Rain”: Top notes of bergamot, pinewood, marine notes, and lemon pass through jasmine and Virginia cedarwood to reach benzoin, sandalwood, and moss. An introspective, gentle interpretation of rain, it invites us in with the words, “Have you ever smelled damp firewood being put into a fireplace?”

Pioggia Moderata: “Moderate Rain”: Themed around memories of rain wetting Milan’s cobblestones, it moves from top notes of bergamot, iris, myrtle, and nutmeg to jasmine and clove, finally arriving at a base of musk, tonka bean, labdanum, and patchouli.

Pioggia Forte: “Heavy Rain”: A metaphor for two bodies joined in the memory of a sudden downpour. Top notes of gardenia and rose lead into a heart of geranium, jasmine, and cyclamen, then moss, benzoin, and amber. It has the most sensual expression of the three.

By the Way…

The Nickname “the Pope’s Perfumer”

It was UNUM’s first fragrance, LAVS, that made Filippo Sorcinelli internationally famous. It transformed into a perfume the scent used to envelop the liturgical vestments of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis before shipment. Attracting attention as “The Pope’s Scent,” it continues to be discussed among enthusiasts around the world as a masterpiece of incense perfumery. The Nebbia brand, too, extends from this context of a “perfumer of sacred garments.”

Shake the Bottle and Fog Appears

The way a Nebbia bottle turns milky inside when shaken has long been a talking point among fans. Ingredient lists for older products include light-scattering materials such as “Synthetic Fluorphlogopite” and “CI 77891” (titanium dioxide), suggesting that these ingredients create the visual effect. In its appearance too, it embodies a “bottle of fog.”

The 2021 Art and Liturgy Prize

In 2021, Filippo Sorcinelli received the Art and Liturgy Prize from the Pontifical Liturgical Institute in recognition of innovation in liturgical vestments. It honored his achievements as a liturgical clothing designer rather than a perfume brand, but there is no doubt that the same spirituality permeates his perfumes.

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