The paper presents an analytical proof demonstrating that the Sandwiched Volterra Volatility (SVV) model is able to reproduce the power-law behavior of the at-the-money implied volatility skew, provided the correct choice of the Volterra kernel. To obtain this result, the second-order Malliavin differentiability of the volatility process is assessed and the conditions that lead to explosive behavior in the Malliavin derivative are investigated. As a supplementary result, a general Malliavin product rule is proved.