Diesel (company)
Diesel S.p.A. is a retail brand headquartered in Breganze, Italy known for luxury denim which also vends clothing, footwear, and accessories. It is part of OTB Group.
Diesel USA filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March 2019, and announced it would close some of its brick-and-mortar stores. Its parent company, Diesel SpA, was not part of the bankruptcy filing.
Belgian designer Glenn Martens was appointed artistic director of Diesel in October 2020.
History
Beginnings
Diesel founder Renzo Rosso began stitching jeans on a sewing machine at the age of fifteen. He used his mother's sewing machine to produce low-riding, bell bottomed jeans, which he would wear himself and sell to his friends for 3,500 lire a piece. He later attended an industrial textile manufacturing high school in Padua.In 1976, Rosso began working for a clothing manufacturer called Moltex, which was owned by Adriano Goldschmied. After working with the company for two years, he used a loan from his father to buy a 40% holding in the company, which changed its name to Diesel, and marketed jeans under the Diesel brand and many others. Rosso bought out Goldschmied's interest in the Diesel brand name in 1985 for US$500,000, becoming the sole owner of the company. Rosso has said that he learned marketing from the US, creativity from Italy, and systems from Germany.
1990s
During the first part of the 1990s, Rosso pioneered Diesel into the fashion world and set the grounds for its establishment in global markets. In 1990, Russ Togs, Inc. received the license to market and distribute Diesel lines in the United States and Mexico. By 1991, Russ Togs was going out of business, and sold Diesel Sportswear to Rosso upon ending the licensing deal. As a result of Russ Togs collapse, the creation of made in the USA Diesel products never came to fruition, and Diesel instead placed its made-in-Italy jeans and clothing in US stores.Pierre Winther’s Artistic Collaboration with Diesel Jeans
In 1993, Diesel hired Pierre Winther to redefine its visual identity and brand image. Collaborating with Diesel's headquarters and the Stockholm-based agency Paradiset, Winther created the new groundbreaking "Successful Living" campaigns. His work featured complex, staged scenarios, such as a dramatic car crash and a surreal church event, which broke the mold of traditional advertising. These provocative and visually arresting images created a global sensation. Consumers eagerly collected the campaign's posters and materials, elevating Diesel's brand image and solidifying its position as one of the leading denim brands worldwide.Winther's photograph famous Car Crash 1993 and House of love 1994 stands as one of the most iconic and recognized images in advertising history. The image, part of Diesel's revolutionary campaigns, pushed the boundaries of fashion marketing with its bold storytelling and striking visuals. It gained further acclaim when featured in an exhibition at Fotografiska Museum in Stockholm, which ran from November 18, 2016, to February 12, 2017. The exhibition highlighted controversial and influential Diesel advertising images, celebrating the brand's ability to challenge societal norms through unconventional and provocative visuals. Pierre Winther stated, “I created a world providing profound social messages that offered ethical, political, and even philosophical discourse in a strong, colorful, Fellini-like world. I depicted these themes in a more contemporary way that, to this day, provokes both a grimace and a grin.” Winther's collaboration marked a quantum leap for Diesel, cementing its reputation as a bold, innovative force in the global fashion industry.
In 1991, the company launched its first international marketing effort with the highly successful 'Guides for Successful Living' campaign series. The campaign won a Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, the world's leading awards in advertising, in 1992. In the same year, Diesel also became the title sponsor for the World Superbike racing circuit. Diesel continued to ignore common marketing rules and began to establish itself as a major brand in the global fashion market. This was a result of Rosso's ambition to always break new grounds and his aspiration to work with most creative agencies and photographers around, including Pierre Winther, David LaChapelle, Terry Richardson, Ellen von Unwerth, Rankin, and Erwin Olaf.
Later, in 1995, the company launched one of its most popular yet provocative campaigns ever, featuring two kissing sailors staged at the peace celebration of World War II. Shot by photographer David LaChapelle, it was the first major public advertisement to show a homosexual couple kissing and was published at height of the "Don't ask, Don't tell" debates in the US, which had led the U.S. Government to refuse entry to military service for openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons. At the same time, Diesel launched one of the first significant fashion retail websites, which housed images of each of its collections. The first Diesel jeans to be sold online were available in Finland and Sweden starting in 1997. It then opened a virtual store that allowed home delivery for further markets the following year.
File:Diesel2599.JPG|thumb|Diesel store in Kraków, Poland
In 1999, Diesel opened large flagship stores in New York City, San Francisco, Rome, and London, and began to open other mono-brand stores for Diesel in order to augment its points of sale in department and other multi-brand retails stores. Further flagship stores opened, including stores in Berlin, Barcelona, and Paris. Diesel also produces illustrated catalogs for its retail lines. The company also won the Premio Risultati award for Best Italian Company of the Year from the Bocconi Institute in 1996. In 1998, The Wall Street Journal called Diesel "the label of the moment".
2000s and 2010s
Throughout the 2000s, Rosso increased Diesel's share in the global fashion market, mainly through opening more company owned stores, embarking on a series of brand collaborations, and by expanding on the business of Diesel. Diesel founder Rosso also began purchasing additional fashion companies in 2002, under the parent company Only The Brave, which Diesel was brought under as well. Companies purchased by Only the Brave included Maison Martin Margiela, Viktor & Rolf, Marni, and licensing company Staff International. In 2005, Diesel released the book "Fifty" upon Rosso's fiftieth birthday, an illustrated history of the company, with a print-run of ten thousand.Diesel's headquarters are in Breganze, on the former Moto Laverda factory area, and had twelve international subsidiaries as of 2005. As of 2008, the company had five thousand points of sale across eighty countries, with 270 mono-brand Diesel stores. Diesel itself owns 170 of those, with the rest owned by franchisees. Turnover was over €1.3 billion in 2009, and by 2010, the company had over 400 stores. In 2012, Diesel founder Rosso was listed on the Forbes list of billionaires for the first time. In 2015, the company held the exhibition Welcome to Diesel World in Shanghai, which provided an overview of the company's history, in conjunction with its collection debut. Another exhibition was held in Tel Aviv to mark the company's twentieth year in Israel.
In the spring of 2013, Rosso named Nicola Formichetti, the former stylist of Lady Gaga and creative director of Mugler, as Diesel's Artistic Director. The announcement followed days of speculation and was met with positive response across the fashion world and daily news press. In an interview with V magazine following the announcement, Rosso said "I finally met somebody as crazy as I am", and explained that Formichetti's new responsibilities will be overseeing "the total view" of Diesel's brand, including product, communications, marketing and interior design. Formichetti's first project's included launching a groundbreaking crowd-funded advertising campaign with Tumblr. The campaign, titled #Reboot and shot by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, featured prominent, young creatives ranging from graffiti artists to film students instead of common models, with varying body shapes, sizes and personal styles.
2020's
Belgian designer Glenn Martens was appointed artistic director of Diesel in October 2020. 2021 direct e-commerce sales for Diesel saw a 34% rise compared to 2019 figures, attributable to Martens work. The Diesel Fall/Winter 2022 Ready-to-Wear fashion show, designed by him and held on 23 February 2022 in Milan, got mostly positive coverage. It was deemed as a "magical and fantastic" show with "big ambitions" and an "out of this world" vibe, while other reviewers appreciated that the "collection’s inspirations spanned decades", although the high-heeled boots proved tricky to walk in, as one model was led off the runway by a member of the technical crew after having repeatedly tripped.Collaborations & partnerships
In 2002, Rosso was asked to collaborate with Karl Lagerfeld on a denim collection for the designer's Lagerfeld Gallery. The collection, which was called Lagerfeld Gallery by Diesel, was co-designed by Lagerfeld and then developed by Diesel's Creative Team. It consisted of five pieces that were presented during the designer's catwalk shows during Paris Fashion Week and then sold in very limited editions at the Lagerfeld Galleries Stores in Paris and Monaco, and at the Diesel Denim Galleries in New York City and Tokyo. During the first week of sales in New York, more than 90% of the trousers were sold out, even though prices ranged from as high as $240 to $1840. In a statement after the show in Paris, Rosso said "I am honored to have met this fashion icon of our time. Karl represents creativity, tradition and challenge, and the fact that he thought of Diesel for this collaboration is a great gift and acknowledgement of our reputation as the prêt-à-porter of casual wear."In 2003, Rosso asked legendary street and graffiti artist Stephen Sprouse to take over Diesel's Union Square store for New York Fashion Week the following September. As part of the collaboration, Sprouse designed a series of limited edition jeans, T-shirts, \and hats, and made a complete makeover of the Diesel store, which meant adding his renowned Day-Glo design to windows, interiors, and outer building exteriors.
Also in 2003, Diesel partnered with video game production company Capcom to create unique costumes for the playable characters in the game Devil May Cry 2.
In 2007, Rosso and Diesel partnered with L'Oréal for the production of Diesel's first fragrance, labelled Fuel For Life. This was followed by a partnership with Italian carmaker FIAT in early 2008 to re-design the classic Fiat 500. Originally one of FIAT's most popular models ever, the new version, simply titled '500 by Diesel', featured several unique design details in the car's interior and exterior and was only produced in 10,000 units.
In the spring of 2008, Rosso launched a collaboration between Diesel and sportswear giant Adidas. After Diesel made a special denim collection for Adidas that was exclusively available at Adidas Originals stores, called Adidas Originals by Diesel, the collaboration then developed into Adidas making special sneakers called Forum Mid Diesel Lea, Forum Mid Diesel Txt, ZX 700 Diesel, Stan Smith Special, Stan Smith 80's Diesel - available in Diesel stores worldwide.
In May 2011, Rosso launched the first ever Diesel bicycle, together with award-winning bicycle manufacturer Pinarello. Built as a single-speed, city bicycle with a hydro formed aluminum frame, the collaboration marked one of the first true collaborations between the bicycle and the fashion industry.