Italian concept store Modes goes into liquidation

Italian multibrand concept store Modes, struggling with severe financial difficulties, has gone into liquidation. The high-end fashion retailer, which until 2022 used to operate some 20 stores, including two prestigious addresses in Paris and Switzerland, applied for bankruptcy protection last December, but the Milan court has decided to revoke the procedure due to the company’s insolvency.

“The conditions and prerequisites for the opening of a judicial liquidation procedure have been found to exist, considering the serious degree of insolvency in which the debtor finds itself, seemingly without having adequate means to deal with the situation,” the court stated in a document published by MF Fashion. In Q1 2025, Modes recorded a negative EBITDA of minus €5.3 million.

Modes’s French subsidiary went into liquidation in December 2024, and was forced to close the store it operated on rue François 1er in Paris, in the heart of the city’s luxury shopping district. 

Modes first began to struggle four years ago, and was compelled to shut down its logistics hub in Trapani, Sicily, at the end of 2023. The company informed the unions at the time that the closure was due to “the economic crisis” and “changed consumer behaviour,” and indicated that its economic and financial results had started to deteriorate from the Fall/Winter 2021-22 season.

The situation worsened in 2023, when Modes recorded a revenue in the region of €100 million, associated with debts for several dozens million euros. CEO Simon Whitehouse, who was hired in 2024, resigned in March.

The business had been set up in 1971 by Sicilian family Carpinteri, and originally consisted of a fashion store in Trapani called Stefania Mode. The Modes company was founded in 1999, and in 2019 the retailer assumed the same name, opening a number of new stores and developing an e-shop focused on premium contemporary brands.

Current owner and boss Aldo Carpinteri is hoping to continue to operate Modes via a new company that would lease and manage the business. He told fashionmagazine.it that “our goal is to relaunch the project immediately and breathe new life into Modes, working in concert with the [liquidation] procedure in order to preserve both the Modes brand name and, above all, the company’s business.”