Amelie gears up to launch first global stores

Amelie is launching an international expansion plan that will see the opening of its first mono-brand stores abroad by the end of 2026, the brand’s CEO and founder, Marina Acconci revealed to FashionNetwork.com. The label’s international debut is scheduled for Poland and the United Arab Emirates with the Autumn/Winter 2026 season, she notes.

With a three-decade career as a lawyer behind her, Marina Acconci opened the first Amelie store at her own outlet centre in Liguria, Brugnato Outlet Village, which opened in 2012. Conceived as an experiment to monitor the centre’s operations, the store quickly became a success story, eventually evolving into a fully fledged company that now employs around 250 people and runs 60 mono-brand stores in Italy.

“I started without the intention of creating a complete collection- just a few basic one-size pieces made by a local artisan. It was a test to see whether the outlet met brands’ needs. After sales boomed, I replicated the formula in other stores around Italy,” Acconci continues. 2017 marks the birth of Amelie, which now also has a wholesale project under consideration to cover those areas of the Italian market where it is less present. “We have an in-house team that designs the collections and a dedicated production network,” adds the CEO.

Amelie takes its name from its founder, a native of Sarzana. “On my birth certificate I was Amelia Marina Acconci. But when I moved to Genoa I lost the second name and only Amelia remained,” explains the founder, who, as a teenager, already signed her diary ‘Amelie’. Her woman is size-less- “we don’t measure women in centimetres or kilos,” Acconci explains- and she doesn’t take to the catwalk, but you meet her on the street or in the office.

“I design for women who have suffered violence and whom I have supported in court,” she continues. “These are stories that become part of your life and reveal to me a more authentic femininity. I’ve overturned the paradigm: I put my creativity at the service of women, of the image they want to project or the story they want to tell.”

The Amelie brand sits within Icon Retail and will close FY2025 with single-digit growth. “Next year we expect an increase in business in line with the expansion of the company’s scope. Despite the difficult times the sector is experiencing, we are under no financial pressure and I am confident that we will continue to work with great peace of mind,” says Acconci.

In Amelie’s winter wardrobe, velvet dominates- “stretchy and soft”- alongside taffeta, “very versatile and lending a fresh touch,” Acconci notes. The season centres on prints inspired by South African botany and the garden, “a metaphor of dedication, commitment, and acceptance.” Women of the past, from the 17th-century nun with literary aspirations to the American writer, thread through the entire offering, which explores different kinds of women to “tell a little of who we are,” concludes Marina Acconci.