The short version: Aeffe, the Italian group that owns Moschino, Alberta Ferretti and Pollini, has asked for extraordinary state wage support covering 389 employees while it tries to close a €115 million sale to Oxy Capital. If you own or plan to buy these labels, the brands will likely survive. The company that made them, in its current form, will not.
Aeffe, the fashion group based in San Giovanni in Marignano on Italy’s Adriatic coast, has requested Italy’s extraordinary wage guarantee scheme — the cassa integrazione straordinaria — for 389 employees at its production sites in San Giovanni in Marignano and Milan, FashionNetwork.com reported on 14 October. The request sits inside a wider workforce plan that includes 221 redundancies in total and dismissal procedures for 120 people. On 9 October, Aeffe and its shoemaking subsidiary Pollini filed a preliminary petition with the Court of Bologna for a court-approved restructuring plan, asking for 60 days to submit it and four months of protection for their assets.
According to the same report, Aeffe sought a joint review with unions after the CGIL trade union challenged its earlier use of the ordinary wage scheme, which had concentrated work suspensions on Fridays. The company has not issued a public statement on the latest request. Its stated priorities throughout the process, as reported by Modaes in July, have been to preserve the company’s assets and safeguard business continuity.
The numbers behind the request
The figures describe a business that shrank faster than its costs could follow. nss magazine reported in August that Aeffe’s debt had reached €101.8 million at 31 May, up from €67.7 million at the end of 2024, and that revenue had fallen 25.4 per cent to €155 million against the same period a year earlier.
The rescue on the table is worth about €115 million, according to Oxy Capital, a Lisbon- and Milan-based investor that specialises in business recovery. In a statement reported by the Italian financial newswire Teleborsa on 30 September, Oxy said the price would be paid partly in cash and partly by taking on liabilities, with earn-out rights for Aeffe and Pollini tied to any future sale. The consortium, reported by Modaes in July, links Oxy with a Chinese industrial partner and Invitalia, Italy’s state agency for business development.
Alongside the petition, Aeffe asked the court for permission to sell business branches before the plan is approved, and for a €7 million super-senior bridge loan to keep operating in the meantime.
How the group will be split
The deal does not buy Aeffe; it buys what Aeffe made. Oxy said the Italian business will be acquired by three new, independent companies under its indirect control, each taking one piece:
One. A Moschino company, holding the Moschino brand.
Two. An Alberta Ferretti company, holding that brand and the production activities in San Giovanni in Marignano.
Three. A Pollini company, to which the Italian staff included in the deal will transfer. Invitalia’s safeguarding fund would finance only this part.
Foreign subsidiaries and their staff are outside the deal. Afterwards, according to Oxy, Aeffe and Pollini would be left free of debt and substantially without assets. nss magazine also reported that, under the new arrangement, the Moschino licence for the Chinese market would go exclusively to the Chinese partner.
Why a house like this ends up here
Aeffe sat in the hardest position in fashion: big enough to carry the cost base of a luxury group, too small to command its pricing power. It ran a factory on the Adriatic, a Milan operation, a shoe business and two internationally known labels, with none of the scale that lets the largest groups absorb a bad year.
The creative side was also in motion. Alberta Ferretti, the founder whose name is on the door, stepped back in September 2024 and Lorenzo Serafini took over the label’s creative direction. At Moschino, Adrian Appiolaza departed and Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo, the founders of the Milan label Sunnei, took over. New creative teams are expensive while they bed in, and buyers tend to wait to see the second collection before committing.
We have written before about why the mid-sized heritage house is the hardest position in luxury, and Ferragamo’s break-even half year showed the same squeeze from a stronger starting point. Aeffe is what that squeeze looks like when the balance sheet runs out first.
The Faz read
The detail that matters most is the factory. San Giovanni in Marignano is Aeffe’s home and its production base, and the deal keeps those production activities with the Alberta Ferretti company. That is the most encouraging line in the whole structure: the label stays attached to the people and machines that make it, rather than becoming a name licensed out to whoever bids lowest.
The Moschino side is less clear. A brand held in its own company, with its China licence handed to an industrial partner, is a brand being prepared to earn royalties. That can work. It can also be the first step towards a label that appears on far more product, made by far more hands, than it did when a single group controlled it. Our earlier piece on why who owns a label decides whether it is made well or merely marketed applies directly here.
Then there are the 389 people. Wage support is designed to keep skilled workers attached to a company through a crisis rather than lost to it. In a factory town, those workers are the craft. Whether the new owners keep them is the real test of this deal, and it will not show up in any press release about brand relaunches.
What it means if you own, buy or sell these labels
If you own Alberta Ferretti, Moschino or Pollini pieces, nothing about their quality changes because of a court filing. What may change is resale demand. Uncertainty tends to soften secondhand prices for a label in the short term; if you were planning to sell, the next few months are probably not the moment unless you need to.
If you are buying, the useful move is to look at what was made before the transition. Alberta Ferretti eveningwear from the founder’s own years, and Pollini shoes made under the existing Italian operation, are known quantities. Check the composition label and the country of manufacture, and judge construction rather than the logo. Archive pieces from vintage and estate sellers are where this kind of label is often best value.
If you are a retailer or stockist, the practical question is continuity of supply and after-sales service for the season already ordered. The court process, not the brand, now sets that timetable.
What happens next
The Court of Bologna must rule on the petition and the protective measures Aeffe requested. If it grants the 60 days asked for, the restructuring plan would be due in early December. nss magazine reported in August that completion of the sale was expected by the end of the year, and the request to sell business branches before plan approval would allow the three new companies to take over sooner. Union talks on the 389 employees continue in parallel.
The honest takeaway: the names will carry on, probably with more money behind them than they have had for some time. Whether they carry on as the same clothes depends on what happens in one factory on the Adriatic, and that is worth watching more closely than the next runway show.
The next move is yours.
Sources: FashionNetwork.com · Teleborsa (Oxy Capital statement) · nss magazine · Modaes
