Alberto Masotti Reminded Me What Luxury Fashion Is Supposed To Protect

Luxury fashion loves a beautiful image. Silk against skin, delicate lace, immaculate campaigns, the promise that wearing something exquisite might make an ordinary day feel different. What interests me more is what happens before that image exists: the hands, the knowledge, and the years spent learning how to make a garment feel extraordinary.

Alberto Masotti, the longtime leader of Italian lingerie house La Perla, understood the importance of that work. His passing marks the loss of a figure whose career connected the intimate world of lingerie with the wider story of Italian craftsmanship.

The Story Started With His Mother

Image via laperla.com

La Perla was founded in Bologna in 1954 by Ada Masotti, Alberto's mother, whose expertise in corsetry laid the foundations for the business. Alberto became president in 1981 and helped develop the company into an internationally recognized luxury name.

What makes that history meaningful to me is how much of it began with a specific skill. Corsetry requires an understanding of fabric, structure, fit, and the body itself. It isn't simply about making something beautiful to look at. The garment has to work when someone actually wears it.

La Perla built its identity around that relationship between technical knowledge and sensuality. Its lingerie became associated with elaborate materials and meticulous construction, proving that intimate apparel could command the same creative attention as clothing designed to be seen by everyone.

Craftsmanship Is More Than a Luxury Selling Point

Image via laperla.com

Fashion often talks about craftsmanship as though it were a finishing touch, something to mention when justifying a price tag. I think it deserves a more central place in the conversation.

A skilled artisan carries knowledge that cannot always be reproduced simply by purchasing better equipment or hiring a new creative director. When those skills disappear, the loss extends beyond a single brand. It affects the wider culture of making clothes.

That is part of what makes Masotti's career worth remembering. His work was tied to a business built on specialist manufacturing, and his later involvement with the Fashion Research Italy foundation reflected a continued interest in preserving textile heritage.

His Final Chapter Looked Forward

Image via laperla.com

Masotti didn't leave innovation behind with La Perla. In 2025, he developed AM.AI, a silk-scarf project that explored how artificial intelligence could reinterpret an archive of approximately 30,000 textile designs. Human designers remained involved in refining the results, with production rooted in Italian textile manufacturing.

I find that an especially fitting final chapter. Preserving fashion history doesn't have to mean freezing it in time. The past can become material for new ideas, provided we remember the human knowledge that made it valuable in the first place.

Masotti's legacy is not simply a collection of beautiful lingerie or a name attached to a famous label. It's a reminder that fashion's most lasting achievements often begin long before the photograph, in the workshop where somebody knows exactly what they're doing.

That is the part of luxury worth protecting.