Renzo Rosso: The jeans genius

Italian fashion legend Renzo Rosso, founder and president of Diesel, a leading Italian retail company, recently paid a visit to Saudi Arabia.
On his first trip to the Kingdom, Rosso says it exceeded his expectations as Saudi Arabia is one of the most important markets for his brand.
The entrepreneur studied Industrial Textile Manufacturing at the Marconi Technical Institute in Padua, north Italy. Rossi found his passion in fashion at the age of 15, that’s when he began stitching his first pair of jeans using his mother’s sewing machine. From that day onwards, he knew he would find a career in fashion and especially in denim. With his talent in sewing, he started designing low rise, bell-bottomed jeans and sold it to his friends for only five Italian liras.
In the mid 70s, he started working for Moltex, a clothing manufacturer, and two years later took a loan from his father and bought a huge percentage from the company and switched its name to Diesel and got back to making jeans. Ten years later, he bought all shares and became the sole owner of Diesel.
Diesel is a leading brand when in comes to denim and jeans. It invented ripped jeans and washed jeans both of which have been a rage in the fashion world for some time now.
Arab News met with Rosso for an interview to learn more about his fashion approach, his passion for jeans and what the brand is working on at the moment.

Over the past couple of years, you have successfully transformed Diesel with your magical touches. Please tell us about the strategy behind the overhaul.
Diesel is not just a brand, it is a lifestyle. I love youth, the younger generation brings new blood and we love working every year with young students and put them in a styling and designing contest. Every year, we see around 1000 portfolios from students from all around the world and select 25 of them to come and compete with each other and three of them win and receive a price and also work in our style office.
When you bring young people on board, they bring along a new vision of who they want to be and bring something new to our lab. I believe this is one of the reasons why I am always young, because I am always surrounded by those young talents.

What have you been up to lately?
At this moment, I am working on my organic-food company because I believe that you are what you eat and because eating well is a real luxury for your body. We have destroyed the world with big production and big companies and we need to save the planet and with that we have to educate people about the damage that is caused by chemicals. Organic food is a way to escape pesticides and substances that are now harming the plant, our trees and our bodies.
I am also investing in medical research to find the best solution for clean water and global warming. Being involved so much in this makes me responsible to provide a better world for the future of our children.

Apart from fashion, Diesel aims to be a lifestyle brand. What is your vision?
If you want to show your personality, you show it in your style of clothing, shades and accessories. Besides that, you also need to show where you live and how you live and we wanted to be a part of our consumers’ homes by creating a collection especially for their homes. I called it Diesel DNA.
The lifestyle brand reflects my personality, my style and me. I try to bring the best from everybody and every country I visit and put them all together along with good taste.

Many brands are now collaborating with celebrities to design special lines that hold their names. Is this something Diesel would do? Would you follow the trend?
I think Diesel is one of the first brands that actually has collaborated with big names as we have collaborated with Karl Lagerfeld on a denim collection for the designer’s Lagerfeld Gallery but we haven’t done more because we think our creations and designs are beautiful enough and creative enough on their own. But never say never, because I think now is a good moment for us to rediscover things more, and we are open for new changes.

What we speak about good denim, we always think about Diesel. How did you manage to stamp your brand on our minds with a strong connection to denim?
Jeans is everything, it is my life. I personally love it and have a strong connection to it ever since my mother bought me the first pair of jeans. From that day, I only wore jeans and nothing but that.
The beauty about it is that you can wear it with anything, and anytime such as on the red carpet, to the school, the dinner and more. We just opened a store in Tokyo where we have designed a wedding dress for a couple using only denim and even the bouquet was made with denim roses. This is what we are all about, jeans is the go-to when you want to look unique.

What makes a good pair of jeans? And what makes a pair of jeans expensive?
The fabric mainly, the details and the finishing. You can discover week by week how good the jeans is, you will buy the jeans because you like it but the more you use it the more you will discover if it is good or not.
Diesel is known for a special treatment that is done to all jeans and this mainly is what sets us aside from many jeans brands. This treatment keeps the jeans in place and makes it live longer and in good quality.

What inspires you when designing a new line?
Everything inspires me. When I was in Balad, downtown Jeddah, I took many pictures of carpets and the streets and the people. This inspires me, the true colors of things and people. I later give those to my designer, who would develop something out of these pictures.

What makes a stylish man in 2016?
I see men wearing super skinny jeans and black leather jackets for nights and light denims and light colors for mornings.

Diesel is globally known for having good music in its stores. “We are actually working on launching a radio station, we are looking to host musicians in these stations and create good music for everyone,” said Rosso.

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