La Perla

La Perla is an Italian luxury house founded in Bologna in 1954 by Ada Masotti, a trained corset-maker who built the company on lingerie and later extended its name into fragrance and beauty [1]. The brand's heritage page and Wikipedia both date the founding to 1954, though one trade article gives 1956 [6]. After a long run as a symbol of Italian "Made in Italy" lingerie, the company passed through several owners and an insolvency before its brand assets and Bologna factory were acquired by former Expedia chief executive Peter Kern in 2025.

Within beauty, La Perla is known chiefly for fragrance. A perfume line has run under the La Perla name since the 1980s, and in 2021 the company launched La Perla Beauty, an in-house division covering fragrance, colour cosmetics and body care.

La Perla began as a corsetry atelier opened by Ada Masotti in Bologna, a city with a long textile tradition. Masotti, who had trained as a corset-maker, draped fabric directly on the body and rejected the restrictive corsetry of the period in favour of structure combined with comfort. According to the company, she named the house "La Perla" — Italian for "the pearl" — after the jewel-lined red velvet case in which her first pieces were delivered.

The brand grew through the following decades alongside changing ideas about women's underwear, moving from the floral and checked collections of the 1960s toward lighter silk designs in the 1970s and wider international recognition in the 1980s. The company frames its craft as artisanal skill passed through generations, with pieces it describes as "lovingly made in Bologna." Its stated values centre on a "for women, by women" idea of empowerment, alongside innovation and hand-finished quality.

La Perla changed hands repeatedly in the twenty-first century. In 2008 it was sold to JH Partners, a San Francisco private-equity firm. In 2013 it was acquired at auction by Silvio Scaglia and Pacific Global Management for 69 million euros. In 2018 it passed to German financier Lars Windhorst's Sapinda Group, later renamed Tennor Holding [4].

Under Tennor, the business fell into crisis. The British parent company filed for administration, Spanish subsidiaries were placed in administration with accumulated debts of some 51 million euros, and the Bologna plant was put under an extraordinary administration regime [6]. La Perla Manufacturing was declared insolvent in February 2024 [4]. In 2025 Peter Kern, the former chief executive of Expedia, acquired the brand assets and the Bologna factory for roughly 25 million euros, in a deal announced on 10 June 2025 and completed that October through his Luxury Holding vehicle [6]. Kern pledged a further 30 million euros in investment through 2027 to restart production and preserve more than 200 jobs, with China and the United Arab Emirates named as priority markets.

The company's corporate headquarters is listed by Wikipedia as London, while La Perla itself presents Bologna — the site of its original atelier and its manufacturing — as the centre of its identity [4].

La Perla positions itself at the luxury end of its market and frames its products around quiet confidence rather than display. Its lingerie heritage is described in terms of a "treasured pearl" and of garments meant as everyday "self-assuring armour" rather than occasion wear. The company's mission, as stated on its site, is to "shape every woman's desires" with what it calls creative sensitivity and high standards of elegance.

For the beauty line, that positioning is paired with a clean-beauty message. The division asks, in its own words, "why should we have to choose between self-care and caring for the world around us?", and presents its fragrances as a form of self-discovery rather than show.

La Perla's first fragrance, "Original La Perla," appeared in 1986. The line continued over the following decades and, by the count of fragrance databases, grew to around fifty perfumes. Historically the perfumes were marketed under licence; Revlon held the La Perla fragrance and beauty licence until that agreement ended in 2020.

In 2021 the company brought beauty in-house with La Perla Beauty, a subsidiary launched on 27 May 2021 under chief executive Peter Shaefer [5]. The launch spanned an eight-piece fragrance collection priced at 100 euros per 30-millilitre bottle, a range of matte lipsticks, mascaras and other colour cosmetics, and a set of prebiotic, vegan body-care products. The fragrances were developed with perfumers from the houses Firmenich, Givaudan, IFF and CPL Aromas. In 2022 the division introduced its flagship La Perla Signature Eau de Parfum, composed by perfumer Louise Turner as a floral-woody scent built on a violet leaves accord, Jasmine Sambac and vetiver.

The beauty range is presented as vegan and refillable, with recyclable packaging on most products. The company says the line carries the Positive Luxury Butterfly Mark, PETA membership and an EcoVadis Bronze Medal [7].

La Perla's lingerie has appeared in film and on public figures. Daniel Craig wore La Perla swimming trunks as James Bond in Casino Royale in 2006. Victoria Beckham wore the brand's Cage Bustier in 2007, and Beyoncé wore a La Perla cage top at the 2014 Grammy Awards [4].

In May 2014, complaints were raised about mannequins in a New York store that were described as depicting visible ribs and concave stomachs. The mannequins were subsequently removed [4].

La Perla's ownership status is best described as acquired. Following the 2024 insolvency of La Perla Manufacturing, the brand's assets and its Bologna plant were bought by Peter Kern in 2025, and the most recent recorded activity is the completion of that acquisition in October 2025, accompanied by a planned relaunch investment of 30 million euros through 2027 [6]. The standalone La Perla fragrance line, operated separately from the lingerie business, has run continuously since the 1980s.