It’s hard to picture a place that’s more ‘in plain sight’ than Rome’s Piazza della Rotonda. Anchored by the dome-topped Pantheon — the circular pagan temple-turned-Catholic basilica that welcomes some nine million visitors every year — the plaza is perennially packed with half-lost tourists each on their own crusade for a couple of scoops from one of the many beloved gelaterias nearby.
Yet only those who take the right number of wrong turns end up just around the corner, behind the Pantheon, at Ditta Annibale Gammarelli — tailor to the Pope for more than two centuries. And even if they do end up in front of the historic atelier, fewer still will imagine the sartorial wonders that await them inside. In relatively recent years, Gammarelli has developed a cult following among international fashion mavens, expanding its reach well beyond the originally intended audience for its clerical collections. In 2020, the brand even branched into e-commerce, the better to cater to the growing secular demand for its sacred creations.
Unlikely as the fashion world’s obsession with Gammarelli is in the first place, even more surprising is the fact that it all seems to have started with socks. Longtime Vogue editor-at-large Hamish Bowles became an early evangelist for the finely woven items, which are available in cotton lisle, merino wool, or silk, and in bright red (for cardinals), regal purple (for bishops), black (for run-of-the-mill parish priests), plus white knee-highs (for the Pope himself), among other colors.
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Unlike most of Gammarelli’s offerings, which are now available online, the socks remain for sale exclusively from the polished, dark wooden drawers and shelves of the shop itself. (The atelier occupies the ground floor of a neoclassical building whose upper reaches rather conveniently house the Vatican’s neoclassical Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy.) And that alone makes an inperson pilgrimage to Gammarelli something of a sacramental rite for style aficionados. But there’s so much more here than the holiest of hosiery.
“Socks are the favorite items,” confirms Stefano Gammarelli, who, together with his cousins, serves as the sixth generation of the family to own and run the shop. “But now also ties, slippers, suspenders, and pullover sweaters are starting to be popular.” The ties and suspenders, he notes, are made from remnants of the luxe fabrics used for vestments, the sweaters with a wool-cashmere blend. As for the gold-trimmed velvet slippers — available in red, purple, green, and pure Papal white, and festooned with grosgrain ribbon — they’d add the perfect pop of panache to a tuxedo.
