Jeans companies take advertising beyond the frontiers with in-your-face campaigns
Denim company Diesel is poised to launch phase two of an assault on a world already entranced by its Nineties cool image, writes Susannah Barron
They know how to throw a good bash, Diesel. Alexander McQueen, Antonio Berardi and Hussein Chalayan might be London fashion weeks hottest tickets, but its denim company Diesel that promised the best night out when the collections kicked off this week. The companys first show in Britain isnt part of the official schedule, but the British Fashion Council has kindly made sure that nothing clashes with Diesels Style Lab event, a multi-media extravaganza to showcase the labels spring/summer 1998 collection previously Diesel has always shown in New York.
Big on irony and worn by modern-day heroes from Ewan McGregor and Jarvis Cocker to LTJ Bukem, Diesel exudes the kind of knowing, eclectic, Nineties cool that everyone seeks but few manage to pull off convincingly. So effortlessly, in fact, does the label encapsulate modern urban chic, that it comes as something of a shock to learn that its headquarters are based not in some buzzy, upcoming quarter of London, or New York, or even Milan, but in the small, picturesque town of Bassano del Grappa. Hardly a cosmopolitan fashion centre, its situated in the foothills of northern Italy, close to Lake Garda and an hours drive from the nearest cities, Venice and Verona.
Not that this matters. Diesel has created, in this rural backwater, a thoroughly modern centre of creativity. Visitors to Diesel headquarters are greeted by a groovy young receptionist, behind whom swirls a blue-and-orange Op Art wall; elsewhere, plastic chairs in primary colours and quilted-look pillars further reflect the edgy Diesel aesthetic.
On leaving the reception area, the first thing you see is a fully-stocked bar, kitted out in American Fifties furniture. Pairs of china dogs adorn each table. This, explains Paola Marino, the companys Italian public relations (PR), is where many of Diesels employees hold meetings.
Further on lie the various design studios and production offices, all full of young creative types dressed in the denim basics and kitschy clubwear (geek-chic glasses, retro-print shirts) for which the brand is renowned.
Diesels employees might look diverse on paper, with designers from Britain, the Netherlands and America joining the native Italians to form a multi-lingual, multi- racial workforce, but they all exude a similar kind of attitude; obviously supremely well-adjusted, they radiate the good-natured friendliness that comes with inner confidence. Welcome to Planet Diesel.
The quintessential Diesel employee is Wilbert Das, the creative director. An unassuming Dutchman, hes been with the company for nine years and, hand on heart, genuinely loves his job. Its easy to see why. Theres the travel opportunities for a start: every six months, Diesels designers take off around the world (they travel in twos, to whichever destination they fancy) to get inspiration.
If they should visit South Beach, Miami, chances are good that theyll end up at Diesels very own super-swish hotel, The Pelican, reaping the benefits of 25 individually-styled rooms with Diesel-esque names such as Love, Peace and Leaf Forest or The Best Whore House in Texas, rather than numbers.
More important, however, is the simple philosophy that Diesel brings to the process of fashion designing. Our only criterion, says Das, is to think of ourselves as the customer. We dont want to be influenced by trend-watchers or market research. We do things that we love. I like to think, he continues, that Diesel has a heart.
If Diesel does have a heart, then it is undoubtedly Renzo Rosso, the companys motorcycle-loving owner. Diesel the name was inspired by the Seventies oil crisis started in 1978, when Rosso founded the company in partnership with his former boss, Adriano Goldschmied. Rosso took sole control in 1985, when, he says, I started to make the products I really like. From then, Rosso began to form Diesel in his own image. I started to build a team which was very similar to me: friendly, easy, nothing formal. You can still see this in the company.
When hiring staff, he relies very much on intuition; star signs are also important. Hugely charismatic and clearly admired by his workforce, Rosso at 42 has the appearance of a weather-beaten surfer. His curly hair is streaked with blond, his blue eyes crinkled as if he were constantly looking into the sun (press shots show him in pensive mode).
Reflecting on his happy workforce: I see people working here, they are happy; they go home and enjoy kids, family, the rest of life, he says. Sometimes I think it is a mission. I think someone really drives me. This someone, as it turns out, is someone up there; Rosso is a religious man. He refuses, despite the PRs entreaties, to talk about Diesels charitable activities (Charity is coming from the heart, not from the business). He despairs that there are too many negative things in the world.
These sentiments, delivered with none of the usual Diesel irony, are astonishingly uncynical for someone who has been in the fashion business for years. How has he kept his ideals? I try to be myself, he says, simply. I still have the foot on the floor. Rest assured that, from Rosso, all this sounds charming as opposed to pious; this is not a man on a soapbox. He says in the book Forty, compiled to celebrate his fortieth birthday, I definitely dont see myself, all things considered, as some kind of guru ready to go around preaching the value of increased global unity. Instead of using persuasive words, anyway, I think that setting a visible, successful example of ones ideals in practice is the most effective way to communicate a particular vision for the world.
In other words, although Diesel people (creative, energetic, well-travelled, multi-cultural) enjoy a lifestyle that most young people must surely envy, theyll be damned if theyre going to market it that way.
Quite the opposite, in fact: Diesels phenomenally successful advertising strategy is built around the central joke of not selling a lifestyle. Its Guide to Successful Living campaign began in 1991. Diesels plasticky, Seventies-inspired clothing was already at odds with the rest of the denim markets traditional Americana, but the advertising was even more radical. Instead of using Wild West workwear imagery, or harking back to the America of the Fifties, Diesels Technicolour epics were resolutely Nineties.
More important, however, was the attitude these adverts conveyed. The product took second place to the underlying philosophy: an irreverent, ironic, and, some would say, downright sick view of modern life. One advert, How to smoke 145 a day, asked, Man, who needs two lungs anyway? Another welcomed the hole in the ozone layer: How to get an eight-minute suntan. Nobody ever promised that wearing Diesel would make the world a better place, but, if you appreciated the adverts, then youd probably like the denims too.
It was a global campaign designed to appeal to like-minded individuals all around the world, and subsequent adverts reflected the concerns that unite young people of all nationalities: one image showed women in fur coats locked up in cages; another depicted two male sailors kissing amid the celebrations on Victory in Europe Day.
Fellow Italian company Benetton is an obvious comparison, but Diesels advertising was less sensationalist, and its message funnier, and rather more subtle, than the United Colours of Benetton images. Plenty of people got the joke, and Diesel launched as a brand.
Advertising director Maurizio Marchiori is an engaging character: long-haired, burly, talkative and all fired up following his first proper holiday in 10 years. Before joining Diesel, he was European karate champion; hes also a dead ringer for Helmut Lang.
Over lunch in a sunny market square, he takes charge of my tape recorder, switching it on to deliver an enthusiastic, but largely unintelligible lecture about Diesels advertising strategy. The gist of it, though, is this: Diesels advertising is due for a change. The past few years have been about introducing Diesel the brand; job done, its now time to show us what the company actually does.
Until now, the product has been like the costumes in a movie, explains Marchiori. Now, we want to focus on the product. Most people have a vague idea of Diesel as a trendy, club-oriented kind of label; what they probably dont know is that it is primarily a jeans label, albeit one with a strong fashion bias. By the time the various fits and fabric washes have been taken into account, Diesel offers 215 different basic jeans, accounting for over 60% of the companys turnover. Still, the publics hazy picture of the label hasnt done it any harm.
Now with an annual turnover of $300-million and a staff of 1000, Diesel is moving up a gear. The first retail outlet opened in New York in March 1996; this was followed by stores in London, Birmingham, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Rome and San Francisco. There are more on the way. Rosso thinks big.