Filippo Sorcinelli

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History of the house

Filippo Sorcinelli came to perfumery from the world of sacred art. An Italian artist, designer and cathedral organist, he founded the atelier LAVS in 2001 to produce liturgical vestments for the Catholic Church, a clientele that has included Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. This double life, between the organ loft and the vestment workshop, shaped the imagination he would later pour into fragrance.

He began his perfume project under his own name in 2013, with the founding collection UNUM, inspired by Gothic architecture and the incense-filled spirit of the Vatican. The inaugural perfume, LAVS, released in 2014 and named after his vestment atelier, paired pepper, cardamom and jasmine with amber and tonka to evoke the sacred workshop. It remains the best known composition of the house.

From a first set of perfumes, UNUM grew into a much larger body of work, and Sorcinelli added further collections, notably Extrait de Musique, devoted to the organ, and Memento, presented at Esxence in 2024 and devoted to cathedral sacristies, extending his themes into new emotional and artistic territory. Across all of them he has kept the role of sole author, composing each perfume himself rather than briefing an external nose.

The house operates from Italy, with atelier activity centred in Santarcangelo di Romagna and a laboratory in Mondolfo, in the Marche region, alongside the continuing LAVS vestment work. Sorcinelli's parallel practice as a photographer, musician and designer remains inseparable from the perfumes, which he presents as part of a single artistic project.

The collections

Filippo Sorcinelli does not run a perfume line so much as a sequence of author collections, each born from a precise obsession (liturgy, the organ, sacristies, the sky, desire) and held together by a single artist's hand. More than a catalogue, it reads as a body of work split into chapters, where perfume extends his music, his photography and his painting. It is this logic of thematic cycles, rather than membership in any olfactory family, that structures the house and makes it worth reading one collection at a time.

UNUM

UNUM is the founding collection, born in 2014 with LAVS, originally a spray meant to scent the liturgical vestments of the LAVS atelier before it became a perfume to wear. That move from sacred textile to skin is the house's founding act: it sets incense, woods and resins as the matrix for everything that follows. The collection explores spirituality, the Gothic, music and photography, in compositions that are dense and devotional rather than seductive. Opus 1144 offers its most liturgical reading, an architectural incense that evokes the cold stone of a cathedral, while Rosa Nigra tilts the register toward a dark, carnal, almost funereal rose. UNUM matters because it states Sorcinelli's grammar before any variation: here perfume is treated as an object of worship.

Extrait de Musique

Extrait de Musique makes the artist's bond with the organ tangible, the instrument of his training and his first language. The bottle itself takes the shape of an organ stop knob, the lever an organist pulls to summon a register, turning the object into a literal transposition of the instrument. Olfactively, the collection tries to render the sound matter of a great organ as incense and smoked woods: air pushed through pipes, the warm dust of a loft. Its strategic point is to shift the very idea of perfume toward synaesthesia, where one smells a sonority rather than a flower or a fruit. Its latest edition ships with a limited-edition vinyl of seven organ improvisations played by Filippo Sorcinelli, sealing the musical gesture at the heart of the perfumed project.

Memento

Presented at Esxence in 2024, Memento is devoted to cathedral sacristies, the closed rooms where vestments, censers and ritual objects are kept. Where UNUM started from the rite, Memento starts from the place and its memory: the smell of old cabinets, wax, spent incense and impregnated liturgical fabric. The collection thus extends the house's incense-laden, spiritual writing, but on a more intimate, enclosed, almost archaeological register. It confirms that Sorcinelli advances through successive sacred spaces rather than trends, and that a new collection, for him, begins with a room to be made to breathe.

Atmosphere d'Émotion

Atmosphere d'Émotion turns the house outward, from the sacred interior to the sky and the weather, threaded with biblical references. It is an olfactory exploration of atmospheric phenomena, where each perfume tries to fix a state of the air rather than a classical accord. It gathers three fragrances on fog (Nebbia Densa, Nebbia Fitta, Nebbia Spessa), three on rain (Pioggia Debole, Pioggia Moderata, Pioggia Forte) and four on wind (Ruah, Vento impetuoso, Vento forte, Brezza leggera). The names rise from light to intense, which says the collection's ambition: to map a single meteorological material in graded densities, like a score of nuances.

Superfluo?

Superfluo? is the house's most paradoxical collection, born from a body-care line (shower gel, cream, shampoo, partly built around LAVS) before it was enriched with extrait de parfum scents to wear. Its questioning title is a manifesto: starting from the avowed "superfluous" of body care, it argues for a more inward, less ostentatious idea of luxury. Scents like Luce dei Cuori, Dolcissimo Sollievo, La Voglia d'Amare and Ascetic Vanilla play a consoling softness, a perfumery of comfort that contrasts with the liturgical austerity of UNUM. It exists to show the author's other face: after the sacred and the meteorological, the intimate and the tender.

X SÉ

X SÉ is the house's most provocative collection, flipping the spiritual project over to explore sexuality and transgression. Where UNUM sanctifies, X SÉ deliberately profanes, with blunt titles like cyber-sex, popper-pop, slightly-b!tch, cruising-area and Quickie and Coffee. The writing turns frontal, urban and nocturnal, treating desire as a field of olfactory inquiry rather than a cliché of seduction. Its presence is necessary to the balance of the work: it proves the house cannot be reduced to church incense, and that one author can hold both the candle and the scandal.

Délire de Voyage

Délire de Voyage gathers limited editions conceived as olfactory art objects, each bottle springing from a lived experience or an event. The collection works like a sensory logbook: Epicentro answers the Marche earthquake, Notre-Dame 15.4.2019 the cathedral fire, Hæc Dies Easter, Unico Suono Caravaggio, Lux Visionaria the biblical Light and a collaboration with Bianca de la Garza. The word "delirium" is taken in its Latin sense, de lira, "out of the furrow", claiming a perfumery of deviation and circumstance. It is the freest collection in the house, the one where perfume becomes pure commemoration, carving an instant into a material.

Beyond fine fragrance, Filippo Sorcinelli extends his world with lifestyle lines (home scents Scented Home, car scents Scented Car and body care) that remain outside Osmetheca's editorial scope, which centres on fragrance for the wearer.

Notable perfumes

The house catalogue spans several collections, all conceived and composed by Filippo Sorcinelli. The references below are anchors of the work, drawn from the official site and specialist coverage. Given the breadth of the catalogue, collection membership is indicated rather than an exhaustive list.

Olfactory signature

The house signature is inseparable from Sorcinelli's other arts. Trained as an organist and steeped in the world of cathedrals and liturgical vestments, he composes perfumes built on incense, resins, cold stone, candle wax and fog, atmospheres drawn from sacred architecture and music. The perfumes aim at emotion and image rather than at conventional pleasantness.

Across UNUM, Extrait de Musique and Memento, the work returns to the sacred and the Gothic: the hush of a great church, the smoke of incense, the chill of marble. Sorcinelli frames each perfume as a chapter in a larger artistic project that also includes his photography, music and design, which is why the house reads as the output of an artist rather than a fragrance brand.

Because he is the sole author of every formula, the catalogue carries a single, unmistakable voice even as it grows. The unifying thread is not a fixed accord but a sensibility: a fascination with the sacred and the architectural, translated into scent by someone who knows both the organ and the vestment atelier from the inside.

Perfume composed like sacred music, by an organist who knows the smell of incense and cold stone from the inside.

Key characteristics

The house today

Filippo Sorcinelli remains an independent, single-author house. Its founder still composes every perfume and runs it alongside the LAVS vestment atelier and his work as a musician, photographer and designer. The collections UNUM, Extrait de Musique and Memento continue to grow, all within the same sacred and architectural imagination.

Distribution runs through selective niche retailers internationally, and the house keeps a strong identity in the artistic, concept-driven corner of niche perfumery. For the niche audience, Sorcinelli is valued as one of the clearest examples of perfume conceived as fine art, where the maker's biography, from the organ loft to the Vatican workshop, is the source of the work.

Frequently asked questions

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