Yamamay

From a head office in Gallarate, Yamamay has run an Italian underwear, lingerie, nightwear and swimwear chain since 2001. Gallarate is in the province of Varese, north-west of Milan. The brand is run by Inticom S.p.A. and was developed by Gianluigi Cimmino, who leads it as joint chief executive with Maurizio Carlino; the Cimmino and Carlino families own it. Its corporate site lists 605 stores in 31 countries and turnover of 150 million euros for 2025, most of it through franchised shops.

Gallarate, 2001

Gallarate sits in the old textile belt of Lombardy, between Milan and Lake Maggiore, and the company's registered office is still there, on Via Carlo Noe. Yamamay was conceived as a chain from the start. It sold its own designs in its own branded shops, at prices well below the lingerie boutiques of Milan, and it relied on franchising to grow. Italian Wikipedia counts about 560 of its 600-plus stores as franchised.

The name is usually linked to the yamamai, the Japanese oak silk moth (Antheraea yamamai), whose cocoons give a pale, lustrous wild silk. The company's own pages do not tell the story, so the link is best taken as likely rather than proven. Either way the product is not silk. Yamamay sells everyday cotton, microfiber and lace at high-street prices.

Built Like a Fashion Chain

Yamamay's model was close to that of its Veronese rivals at Calzedonia: small single-brand shops in malls and main streets, a fast seasonal calendar, and a tight core of T-shirt bras, lace sets, briefs and pajamas. Over the years the range widened to men's underwear (now sold as YMan), children's lines, hosiery, knitwear and swimwear. In 2009 the company launched a cosmetics and makeup line, Yamamay Beauty, and it later added a small range of ballet flats under the name Yamamour.

The marketing borrowed the celebrity habit of Italian fashion. The list of faces is long and very Italian: the actress Martina Stella in 2007, the long jumper Andrew Howe in 2008, the divers and swimmers Tania Cagnotto and Massimiliano Rosolino in 2009, Jennifer Lopez and the DJ Bob Sinclar in 2010, the Olympic swimmer Federica Pellegrini in 2011, and later Emily Ratajkowski and the former Miss Universe Gabriela Isler. The sports names are a clue to the swimwear business, which grew into a real second pillar.

Pianoforte Holding: Underwear, Luggage, Swimsuits

In 2010 the owners merged Inticom, the Yamamay company, and the technical swimwear brand Jaked with Kuvera, the company behind the handbag and luggage chain Carpisa. The result was Pianoforte Holding, a group that operated three consumer brands through franchised shops: Yamamay for underwear, Carpisa for bags and suitcases, and Jaked for swimwear. In 2017 the group reported revenue of about 300 million euros, around 2,300 employees and 1,298 stores in 52 countries across all its brands.

Those group figures are easy to misread. They count every Carpisa and Jaked outlet alongside the underwear shops, so they say more about the holding than about Yamamay itself.

Flagship and Sustainability

In December 2018 Yamamay opened a flagship in Milan with a cafe inside, a statement that the brand wanted to be seen as a fashion destination rather than only a mall unit. The same year it began the M.A.R.E. project with the One Ocean Foundation, a partnership on marine conservation that ran until 2025, and it has since developed Fish Tale, a recycled high-performance fabric. The company publishes a separate sustainability report.

The Current Footprint

The company's own current figures are 605 stores in 31 countries and 150 million euros of turnover in 2025. Italian Wikipedia also gives a figure of 78 stores in Italy, which is hard to square with a network of that size and is probably out of date or limited to company-run shops.

Its direct competitors are Intimissimi and Tezenis in Italy and Oysho abroad. Against them, Yamamay's identity is the swimwear and the sporty, sunlit marketing built on Olympic swimmers and divers. Twenty-five years on, it is still run from Gallarate by the families who started it, which is rarer in Italian fashion retail than it should be.

Last updated October 1, 2026