This story originally appeared on Them.
Filippo Sorcinelli, an Italian tailor known for crafting vestments for Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, and Pope Leo XIV through his studio Atelier LAVS, is also a perfume mogul in his spare time. In a new interview with Dazed about his “conceptual perfume house” UNUM, he opened up about his scents, which bear names like Quickie and Coffee, Cruising Area, and the latest addition: Vulnus.
“What part of us continues to live on in the place where we were wounded?” Sorcinelli asked rhetorically about the new fragrance, which is named after the Latin term for wound. “A remark made at the wrong moment, a sense of shame inflicted in front of others, a caress turned into a threat, a judgement that ends up dwelling in our conscience with the voice of the person who uttered it.”
Vulnus, released last month, features a bottle meant to resemble a hyperrealistic rendition of “bruised human skin.” Described as both “artwork and body horror,” the vessel also features teeth marks — Sorcinelli’s own — on the bottle cap.
“That mark is a sort of intimate signature, closer to anatomy than to calligraphy, which is precisely why it interests me,” he told Dazed. He added that “beauty lies in the dignity of the wounded person and in the possibility that someone might finally pause to look at them closely.”
While the perfume is mostly reminiscent of vanilla and leather, it also contains a “rusted iron note reminiscent of human blood,” per Dazed. Afternotes include jasmine and burnt caramel, which Sorcinelli describes as a journey that, like a relationship, “[leaves] the initial tenderness and the mark of what has happened to coexist in memory.”
Vulnus joins a host of other fragrances developed through UNUM, including Opus, which is described as “The true smell of Gothic, which begins with the laying of the first stone of the basilica of Saint Denis at the gates of Paris in 1144,” as well as Symphone-Passion, which is inspired by the smell that Filippo felt when he played an organ in Rouen.
Other perfumes are much sexier, including Quickie and Coffee, inspired by a hookup in a gas station bathroom and Cruising Area, meant to evoke “that hidden, underground space, with inaccessible and dark passages, with moldy walls and full of ephemeral pleasure.”
Sorcinelli told Dazed that he first became interested in scents through his work tailoring vestments for religious leaders. “I wanted the boxes containing the vestments to have a recognizable scent but a broader question was also emerging concerning memory,” he told Dazed, saying he wanted to evoke spaces “where generations of people have prayed, wept and waited.”
He founded UNUM in 2014 and launched its first fragrance, LAVS, that year. Sorcinelli says that his fragrances appeal to a broad range of people. “Some possess an extraordinary knowledge of perfumery, whilst others have come across my work through a concert, an image, a visit to a boutique or the story told by someone they love,” he told Dazed. “It moves me when someone writes to me to explain that a fragrance has brought back memories of a place, a person who is no longer with us, or a moment they thought was now beyond their reach.”
Sorcinelli, an out gay man, has been obsessed with the church — “fascinated with all the art and gold inside” — since he was a young boy, according to a 2026 interview with the South China Morning Post.
He has also spoken about the church’s refusal to recognize same-sex marriages and its poor record on LGBTQ+ inclusivity.
“The church, usually, should be the most open place,” he told the South China Morning Post. “It’s different with people who want to use the church for their own good. But it’s not the [fault of the] church, it’s always the people.”
“I have absolute respect for the church and have also always felt respect from the church,” he added. “I’m not expecting the church to change completely in a few years, but still there’s nothing wrong with these two things. A man of faith can be a man of church and still live with his sexuality with no problem.”
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them’s newsletters.
