Cosabella

Valeria and Ugo Campello, an Italian couple living in Florida, founded the lingerie brand Cosabella in Miami in 1983. Its name is Italian for "beautiful thing." The brand designs in the United States and has its lace pieces made in Italy, and it is best known for the stretch-lace Never Say Never line. After four decades in family hands it was sold to Switzerland's Calida Group in 2022, and in July 2026 Calida sold it again, to Crown Brands Group of New York.

Italian workshops, Florida address

The arrangement was unusual from the start: an American company, run from Florida, with its production kept in Italy. The company describes its makers as family-run workshops tucked away in villas across the country, and it emphasizes long relationships with Italian lace artisans.

For a small brand that meant higher costs and longer supply lines. It also gave Cosabella a story American department stores could sell, and a hand in its fabrics that cheaper competitors lacked. The brand says it rose to worldwide recognition in the 1990s.

Never Say Never and the Sweetie

The product that defined Cosabella is a soft stretch lace with a scalloped edge, used across the Never Say Never collection. Its best-known piece is the Sweetie, a wire-free, unpadded bralette cut in a soft triangle shape with no molded cups.

The appeal was practical. One elastic lace could stretch across a range of bust sizes, so a bralette sold in a few letter sizes rather than dozens of band-and-cup combinations. It could be worn under a loose top with the lace showing at the neckline. Matching thongs and briefs in the same lace made it easy to sell as a set. Over time the bralette became a standard category across the whole industry, and soft lace triangles of this kind are now sold by almost every lingerie brand at every price. Readers comparing shapes can see the distinction in our bralette vs. triangle bra exhibit.

Never Say Never remains front and center on Cosabella's own site more than four decades after the company's founding.

A women-led company

Cosabella presents itself as women-led, and its brand language centers on helping women feel confident and comfortable. Its stated design approach is to combine traditional artisan work with fashion details, built around signature lace, fit and small unexpected touches. In practice the catalog has stayed close to its strengths: lace bralettes, soft bras, thongs, bodysuits and sleepwear, mostly wire-free.

Two sales in four years

The family era ended in the second quarter of 2022, when the Calida Group, the listed Swiss owner of Calida and the French brand Aubade, bought Cosabella. It gave Calida an American brand, and a softer, wire-free style of lingerie than Aubade's.

The fit did not last. Calida had been shrinking its portfolio, selling its outdoor businesses, and in 2026 it turned to Cosabella. In the first half of that year the brand's revenue fell 36.6% to 4.3 million Swiss francs, which Calida put down largely to a deliberate repositioning of the brand. On July 23, 2026, Calida completed an asset sale of Cosabella's trademarks, other intellectual property and inventory to Crown Brands Group, a New York company. The price was not disclosed.

Calida said the sale simplified its brand portfolio and gave it room to concentrate on its two remaining brands.

Where it stands

Cosabella has now had three owners: the Campello family until 2022, Calida until 2026, and Crown Brands Group since. What carries across all three is the lace. A Never Say Never Sweetie bought today is recognizably the same garment that made the brand's name, still built from a single stretch lace with a scalloped edge, and still presented on the brand's site as Italian work.