La Perla’s Chiara Scaglia gears up for deeper China push with new HK store

Outside of Silicon Valley, it’s rare to find senior executives in their twenties but Chiara Scaglia, who runs Italian lingerie brand La Perla’s Asia-Pacific business, is younger than some of the models that grace the company’s advertising campaigns.

The 25-year-old is the daughter of telecoms tycoon Silvio Scaglia, one of Italy’s richest men, who also controls Pacific Global Management, the holding company for La Perla and modelling agencies Elite and Women. As a fresh university graduate, she took over as chief executive of Gold Typhoon, a music label that was under the same group before it was sold to Warner Music in April. After that, she joined La Perla as Asia-Pacific managing director. Based in Hong Kong, she oversaw the “verticalisation” of regional operations and is spearheading the launch of La Perla’s largest store, in Causeway Bay.

Although the label has always been well regarded among the fashion set, the brand will gain a significantly higher profile next January when it takes up residence in an 8,000 square foot store in Russell Street, opposite Times Square. It will be four storeys of underwear, swimwear and loungewear that start at about HK$4,000 but can run into the hundreds of thousands for the made to measure line.

Scaglia said there was a steep learning curve when she first started working for the family business.

“I graduated and a week later I was working at Gold Typhoon in Beijing,” she said. “It was a very quick move. At the time, I thought the business was in the family but it was still far away. I had studied Chinese, so going back to China was a very natural progression so it kind of happened so quickly without really understanding what was happening. It was a good adventure.”

Heading up a company at such a young age, she said she used to have a “kind of insecurity” when running Gold Typhoon.