Diesel Men's Fashion Brand

Diesel S.p.A. is an Italian retail clothing company, located in Breganze, Italy. It sells denim, and other clothing, footwear, and accessories. The clothing line has two different brands: Diesel and Diesel Black Gold. The company is known for its surreal advertising campaigns. While the most popular Diesel apparel item has been denim wear, the company has expanded to include additional forms of clothing; the company has created leather jackets, and other items. Denim first, then range, then image: the surreal campaigns are recorded as part of the brand's identity, not as decoration around it.

The men's page of that record is the denim page. Diesel's popularity rests on denim wear, and everything else in the profile radiates from the jean: footwear and accessories complete the outfit, leather jackets extend it upward in price and attitude, and the second brand, Diesel Black Gold, sits alongside the main Diesel name as the line's other face. A researcher should hold that order - denim, other clothing, footwear, accessories - because it is the company's own centre of gravity: a jeans company that became a clothing company, not a general fashion house that happens to sell jeans.

Renzo Rosso, From a Sewing Machine to Only The Brave

The founder story is unusually complete. 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. He later attended an industrial textile manufacturing college 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 percent 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, becoming the sole owner of the company.

The expansion record follows the same dated pattern. In 1996, Diesel opened large flagship stores in New York City, San Francisco, Rome, and London, and began to open other mono-brand stores to augment its points of sale in department and other multi-brand retail stores. In 1998, Diesel founded an offshoot label called Diesel StyleLab, which produced higher end fashion designs beyond more traditional denim jeans. In the 2000s, the company began to license its brand to other retail manufacturers to create new product categories. As of 2003, Diesel had three distinct fashion lines: Diesel Style Lab, the most pricey fashion-forward designer label; Diesel, a fashion brand that still focuses heavily on denim; and 55DSL, the board sport-inspired streetwear line that blends fashion and function. Style Lab and 55DSL are now defunct. Diesel founder Rosso began purchasing additional fashion companies in 2002, under the parent company Only The Brave, which Diesel was brought under as well. The official Diesel site is in References.

Reading This Diesel Record

Read as a buying guide, the record sorts a Diesel purchase by line, and the lines must not be confused. The main Diesel brand still focuses heavily on denim, so its jeans are the benchmark purchase; Diesel Black Gold is the second brand the clothing line carries; and the two defunct names - Style Lab, the most pricey fashion-forward designer label, and 55DSL, the board sport-inspired streetwear line - belong to the brand's history, so a garment carrying either name is a period piece, not current range. The licensing sentence matters to a careful buyer for the same reason: in the 2000s the company licensed its brand to other manufacturers for new product categories, so category goods beyond the clothing core were made under licence. No prices or wash names are given.

Diesel, under D in the Men's Fashion Brands directory: Diesel S.p.A., an Italian retail clothing company located in Breganze, Italy, selling denim and other clothing, footwear and accessories under the Diesel and Diesel Black Gold brands, known for surreal advertising campaigns, founded in its modern form by Renzo Rosso - who stitched jeans at fifteen, joined Moltex in 1976, bought a 40 percent holding that became Diesel, and took sole ownership in 1985 - with flagship stores from 1996 and the Only The Brave parent from 2002.

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