The Carlyle investment fund is keen to find a buyer for Italian ready-to-wear label Twinset, in which it has held a 100% stake since 2017. In early 2020, Carlyle gave a mandate to JP Morgan for finding an investor interested in buying Twinset, but the operation was put on hold also owing to the pandemic. Twinset’s owner has now put Rothschild in charge of assessing possible strategic options, as Rothschild itself confirmed to FashionNetwork.com.

For the time being, besides the new mandate’s announcement, there is no further news about Twinset’s future. Rothschild has yet to start exploring the market and assessing opportunities, and there is no timeline for the operation yet.

Twinset was founded in Carpi (near Modena) in 1990 by businessman Tiziano Sgarbi and his wife, designer Simona Barbieri. The label began to expand vigorously in 2012, when Carlyle bought an initial 72% stake in the company, accelerating Twinset’s internationalisation drive.

In 2018, Twinset recorded a revenue of €235 million, which dropped down to €227.3 million the following year. The Covid pandemic dealt a huge blow to the label, which reported a revenue of €140 million in 2020. Hence Carlyle’s decision to divest itself of Twinset, an operation that was complicated by the pandemic’s impact.

Twinset is now waiting to see the options that Rothschild will identify, and the decisions that will be taken by Carlyle.