Amber Valletta and Natasha Poly Walk Twinset’s Inaugural Fashion Show

Martino Carrera
·2 min read
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RUNWAY NEWBIE: “Ordinary girls [are] made extraordinary, with a little help from fashion,” said Twinset chief executive officer Alessandro Varisco ahead of the brand’s debut show at Milan Fashion Week.

“It’s like getting married at 60,” said Varisco about the rationale for hitting the runway after 34 years after the brand was founded.

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The fall lineup hinged on practical and unfussy romanticism with boho whiffs, updated with a young and fresh spin, and although the parade lacked some zing expected from a long-thought-about runway debut, it proved the brand’s ambitions are focused on wearability and commercial appeal.

“Our goal is for people to want to take these clothes straight off the runway and wear them,” Varisco said. The executive said that the brand plans to stick to the show format going forward, but it has yet to decide whether it will stage one for the spring season, too.

“We have a point of view that we think is worth telling,” he said. “We’re not aiming to compete with luxury players, but to offer luxurious products at a democratic price point,” he said.

The collection, 68 percent of which was manufactured in Italy, retails for an average price of 380 euros with perfecto and biker leather jackets at under 1,000 euros.

After tapping into the likes of Emily Ratajkowski, Georgia May Jagger and Suki Waterhouse for its communication over the years, Twinset conscripted models Natasha Poly and Amber Valletta to respectively open and close its debut runway show Tuesday, which was attended by some of the brand’s VIC, or very important clients.

Since Varisco’s arrival in 2015, the company has been in a retooling mode, rationalizing the brand’s offering and introducing new-gen services, including a rental program that bowed in 2019.

Private equity firm the Carlyle Group acquired 70 percent of Twinset in 2012, upping its stake to 90 percent in 2015 and taking full control in 2017 after Simona Barbieri, who founded the company in 1990 in the Italian town of Carpi — a knitwear hub — with business partner Tiziano Sgarbi, left the company for good.

Asked backstage about ongoing speculation that the private equity firm would be looking at options for a divestiture, Varisco didn’t provide more details beyond saying a sale is not entirely off the table.

Twinset operates more than 100 flagships across geographies, and although Varisco billed 2024 as a “transitional year,” he revealed a plan to reach 150 units over the next five years.

Along with cementing its footprint in Europe, the U.S. is a key priority for the executive who shared that he is looking at second-tier cities including Charleston, S.C., Greenwich, Conn., and Naples, Fla.

Although he declined to provide the exact figure for 2023 sales, he said they are more than 200 million euros.

Launch Gallery: Twinset Fall 2024 Ready-to-Wear Collection

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