La Perla returns to Milan under new chief Vannetti with reset collection
La Perla, the Italian lingerie house founded by Ada Masotti, is returning to the Milan Fashion Week calendar with a reset collection under a new chief executive. Alessio Vannetti, a former executive at Gucci, the Italian luxury house, and Valentino, its Rome-based rival, took the top job on 1 September 2026. He will stage a Saturday presentation billed as collection #00.
Vannetti said the foundation of his reboot is the atelier in Bologna, the workshop where samples and high-end pieces are cut and sewn by hand. He described collection #00 as a palate cleanser meant to reinstate the brand's ethos WWD. The show puts La Perla back on a mainstream fashion-week schedule after years off it.
The restart follows a turbulent decade. The founding Masotti family sold the brand to JH Partners, the US private-equity firm, in 2007. Silvio Scaglia, the Italian telecoms entrepreneur, bought it in 2013. It was sold again in 2018 to Tennor, then called Sapinda. After changing hands several times, the company was declared insolvent.
New ownership arrived in 2025. Peter Kern, described as an American industrial entrepreneur, and his wife Kirsten acquired La Perla for EUR 30 million through Luxury Holdings II LLC WWD. Kern has pledged to invest about EUR 30 million in the business, according to an earlier earnings-season report Business of Fashion.
The money is tied to making clothes in Italy. Kern rehired all 223 employees, including seamstresses, in December to continue manufacturing in Italy, mainly in Bologna. The Bologna headquarters officially reopened in January after the factory had been de facto shuttered for the previous three years.
Casual viewers may know the name from the screen. La Perla was referenced in season two, episode one of The Gentleman, the Netflix crime series. It also made a cameo in Rosalia's music video for Berghain, the Spanish singer's collaboration with Björk and Yves Tumor.
The company's website says the brand and its atelier are entering a new era blending craftsmanship with a modern vision of femininity, and that it will soon unveil a reimagined experience.
What makes this stand out for fans is the scale of the repair job. This is not a new print or a guest star. It is a factory reopened, a workforce rehired and a calendar slot reclaimed.
