MILAN – Ellesse is coming back Stateside.

The Italian sportswear brand owned by Pentland Brands in the U.K. since 1993 has signed a multiyear licensing agreement with The Iconic Brands Corporation, a new entity helmed by chairman Todd Furniss, for the design, manufacturing and distribution of Ellesse apparel in the U.S.

The move reflects Pentland’s renewed ambitions for the cult brand founded in 1959 by Leonardo Servadio, a tailor based in Perugia, Italy, with a penchant for winter sports, who soon expanded the brand’s offering to tennis, racing, cycling and golf and outfitted tennis legends including Boris Becker and Adriano Panatta.

Over the past year the company has set up a relaunch strategy aimed at tapping into nostalgia for pre-Millennium sportswear and retooling the brand’s ethos for today’s increasing crossover between the worlds of sports and fashion.

The reboot is spearheaded by Jack Richardson, senior vice president of Ellesse, who joined Pentland from sportswear company Canterbury of New Zealand 18 months ago.

“There are three core pillars to the Ellesse brand’s style. We’ve always been synonymous with fashion, sport — something that we lost sight of over the last few years — and lastly, Italy,” Richardson told WWD. “Losing one of those would mean losing the true DNA, spirit and essence of the Ellesse brand.”

The executive acknowledged that the recent strategy aimed at tapping into Gen Z cool without sticking to the brand’s core values inherently made Ellesse a follower rather than a trendsetter.

Sport has been the missing ingredient, he offered.

“Ellesse is a lifestyle business that’s grounded in sport credentials… sportswear is pretty crucial for us in grounding ourselves in authenticity and the DNA of the brand,” he said. “We needed our own point of view on sport.”

In Richardson’s opinion, the brand founder has to be credited with providing a sports-inflected interpretation of La Dolce Vita.

“The genius of Leonardo was that [he conveyed the idea that] actually sport is the best way to find the Dolce Vita… which is a completely unique [perspective] in the market of sport. So, where all of our competitive set talk about performance in sport, we want to… talk about the pleasure that sport brings,” Richardson said. “Sports at its deepest level is about connecting with friends. It’s about feeling good. It’s about feeling sexual and body confident, and it’s about escapism from your normal life.”

Competing in a packed league that spans performance activewear players and lifestyle labels, from Nike to Lacoste and Fila to Under Armour, the brand wants to to reclaim its prime spot in that conversation, said Ben Nuttall, head of marketing at Ellesse.

Fashion’s ongoing fixation for tennis provided the best environment for Ellesse to reclaim its authenticity.

Earlier this year the brand held two-week activations timed with the Rome Open, which included an influencer and press trip to the matches, out-of-home advertisements and a takeover of local ice-cream shops and cafés. This week it is capitalizing on the visibility of Wimbledon, with a takeover of London’s renowned Shreeji Newsagents newsstand.

Tennis was paramount for Ellesse at the most recent edition of Pitti Uomo, too, where it mounted a 6,458-square-foot, open air court to unveil its spring 2026 collection, the first under the new course, which started to tease how the brand’s reboot is trickling down to its fashion offering, although Richardson recognized that the process will come full circle in 2027.

“Pitti Uomo really extrapolated everything that we’ve done over the last few months,” Richardson said. “That was all part of showing that personality and that spirit and that inclusivity and that sociability that we were trying to bring [back].”

Up next is a collaboration with the Cincinnati Open, the tennis tournament taking place Aug. 5 to 18 in the Ohio city. Ellesse has been named the official tennis apparel partner of the tournament, providing outfits for the ball crew, line judges, officials, volunteers and staff.

The move simultaneously cements Ellesse’s roots in tennis and its return to the U.S.

After terminating its previous two licensing agreements, for the sportswear and the lifestyle offerings, Ellesse halted operations in the country for about a year.

“Although those two organizations did a really good job, what became really clear is that, firstly, we needed one organization managing the U.S. end-to-end. Secondly, we wanted a group of people that understood the Ellesse brand from the past and the brand strategy and direction that we were moving forward with, and latterly, wanted to invest with us on this journey,” Richardson said.

The Iconic Brands Corporation was specifically established to handle the Ellesse license by chairman Furniss, a former tennis player and incidentally the first American athlete to scoop up a contract with the Italian brand in 1978 and who now runs private equity firm gTC Group. Furniss has recruited a team of industry experts to lead the venture, including apparel veteran Duwayne Miller as chief executive officer, who boasts previous experiences at Ralph Lauren, Brooks Brothers, and the Four Seasons hospitality chain, as well as PM Andersson as chief financial officer.

Richardson said that the licensee’s strategy aligns with Pentland’s ambitions for Ellesse.

“It felt like they had a mole in our organization, because it was so accurate and consistent with what we were talking about. They really wanted to focus on tennis. They really wanted to focus on fashion and performance in tennis and the lifestyle that racket sports bring,” he said.

Distribution in the U.S. is to leverage a direct-to-consumer model, with 70 percent of sales coming from the regional e-commerce site and four flagships to open by the end of 2027 in still undisclosed cities. The remainder 30 percent of local business is to be split between the “green grass” channel — such as tennis and golf country clubs and clubhouses scattered across the U.S. — and department stores.

“The plans and the forecast coming out of America, the biggest consumer market in the world, are significant, and that market is completely untapped for us, so we’re very excited about that,” Richardson said.

Ellesse is a regionalized licensed business with key partners in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, in Chile where the brand operates 41 stores, China and South Africa.

South Africa and Chile are currently overdelivering, Richardson said, and good prospects are on the horizon for Italy, Germany, France, and the U.K., as well as the Balkan region.

In footwear, Ellesse has a licensing agreement with the Padua, Italy-based Nice Footwear, which holds design, manufacturing and distribution rights for Italy and France.

Overall, business is currently 90 percent wholesale-driven, but the new strategy comes in to shift that approach, too.

“I am a very strong believer that direct to consumer is an absolutely critical part of our go to market strategy,” Richardson said.

The first flagship in the EMEA region is opening in Istanbul by the end of the year.

A brand overhaul in the midst of an economic downturn could sound counterintuitive but Richardson believes that the unique positioning at the intersection of sportswear and lifestyle and the accessible price points will help Ellesse drive growth globally.

The original Ellesse logo combines two ski tips framing a half tennis ball, so more activations aligned with winter sports are on the horizon for phase two of the brand’s relaunch, Richardson said.