L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, JULY 9, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 12 L'Italo-Americano R e n z o R o s s o g r e w u p o n a s m a l l f a r m outside Vicen- za, in Veneto, the son of country people w h o w o r k e d t h e l a n d . H e learned to sew on his moth- er's machine and made his f i r s t p a i r o f t r o u s e r s a s a teenager, then went to study at an industrial textile high school in Padua. Somewhere along the way, he got hold of a n i d e a t h a t w o u l d h a v e s o u n d e d a b s u r d t o m o s t p e o p l e a r o u n d h i m : t h a t blue jeans, the most Ameri- can garment there is, could b e m a d e i n t o s o m e t h i n g Italian, and that he was the o n e t o d o i t . I n 1 9 7 8 , a t twenty-three, with a little money and a good deal of nerve, he co-founded a jeans label in the village of Molve- na and gave it a name that meant nothing in particular. He called it Diesel. But that name was clever- er than it looked, because those were the years of the oil crisis, when diesel was being talked up as the alter- native fuel, and Rosso want- e d a n a l t e r n a t i v e k i n d o f j e a n s , r o u g h e r a n d m o r e r e b e l l i o u s t h a n w h a t w a s already on the shelves. It helped that "Diesel" sound- ed the same in every lan- guage. In the end, he had n e v e r m u c h b e l i e v e d i n n a t i o n a l b o r d e r s , a n d h e wanted a name that could travel anywhere. By 1985, he had bought out his part- ners and owned the compa- ny outright, a farmer's son from Veneto now running a denim label of his own. R o s s o s a w s o m e t h i n g early that most of the indus- try had missed: jeans were no longer workwear but had become a way of dressing that said something about the person wearing them, a n d t h e r e w a s n o r e a s o n t h e y h a d t o b e c h e a p . S o Diesel treated its denim as a luxury good, but a luxury good that we could a l l h a v e : e a c h p a i r w a s washed and distressed until i t l o o k e d l i v e d - i n a n d almost one of a kind, and it c a r r i e d a p r i c e t o m a t c h . A n d t h e n , t h e r e w a s t h e a d v e r t i s i n g , w h i c h w a s stranger than anyone else's, especially the slogan Rosso introduced in 1991, "F o r Successful Living," which w a s m e a n t a s a j o k e , attached to campaigns that were surreal and provoca- tive and gently mocked the whole idea of glossy success while selling it anyway. The a d s w o n a w a r d s a n d annoyed people, which was more or less the intention. Diesel kept investing in its Veneto home, and helped t u r n t h e r e g i o n i n t o a byword for premium denim, made with a particular Ital- ian feeling for how a thing s h o u l d l o o k a n d f i t . T h e press took to calling Rosso t h e " j e a n s g e n i u s , " a n d eventually one of the few Italian fashion billionaires to have built the whole thing himself, with no famous sur- name behind him. T h e n c a m e t h e m o r e unusual move: in 2002 he pulled his holdings together into a group he named, not m o d e s t l y , O n l y T h e B r a v e , or OTB. Over the following years it took in some of the great names in fashion, Maison Margiela, M a r n i , a n d J i l S a n d e r among them, until it stood as one of the very few global fashion groups still wholly owned and run from Italy, w i t h r e v e n u e s i n t h e b i l - l i o n s . D i e s e l , o f c o u r s e , stayed at the center of it. S i n c e 2 0 2 0 , t h e b r a n d has been enjoying a second youth, especially thanks to t h e d e s i g n s o f G l e n n Martens, a young Belgian who led a real revival, and w h o l i k e s t o t h r o w o p e n D i e s e l ' s M i l a n r u n w a y shows to thousands of stu- dents and ordinary mem- bers of the public, instead of keeping them for the usual invited few. This is a special attitude in today's fashion world, an attitude that tells us a lot about how Martens, and Diesel as a brand, envi- sion themselves. Who could i m a g i n e t h a t i t a l l b e g a n with the work of a farmer's s o n f r o m V e n e t o w h o guessed Italy could dress the world starting from a pair of jeans? I n a seafront piazza i n A m a l f i , y o u ' l l find a bronze statue of a man bent over a c o m p a s s , l o s t i n t h o u g h t . H i s n a m e w a s Flavio Gioia, and the tra- dition holds that around the year 1300 this Amalfi- t a n s a i l o r i n v e n t e d t h e mariner's compass and gave the world its bearings. There is only one difficulty with the story: Flavio Gioia never existed. H e w a s b o r n , i t t u r n s out, of a slip of the pen, when a fifteenth-century h i s t o r i a n w r o t e t h a t t h e compass had been perfect- ed "by the Amalfitans," and a later scholar, copying the line, nudged a comma out of place. Over the following d e c a d e s t h e p h r a s e w a s misread and reshaped until an anonymous people had b e c o m e a s i n g l e m a n , "Flavio the Amalfitan," and Gioia, the name of a spot near Amalfi, was tacked on to finish him off. By the time the sculptor cast that statue, the town had a hero, complete with a face, for something no one person ever did. A n d y e t t h e h o n o r behind the legend is real because the magnetic nee- d l e i t s e l f c a m e f r o m f a r away, out of China, where t h e l o d e s t o n e ' s s t r a n g e northward pull had long been known. But it was the sailors of Amalfi, one of Italy's proud medieval mar- itime republics, who turned t h a t c u r i o s i t y i n t o a n instrument a captain could trust. Documents from the late twelfth century show them already steering by t h e m a g n e t i z e d n e e d l e , and, most important of all, it was the Amalfitans who first mounted the needle on a c a r d m a r k e d w i t h t h e rosa dei venti, the wind rose, so that a helmsman could read his heading at a glance rather than watch a sliver of iron tremble in a bowl of water. That mar- riage of needle and wind rose is, in essence, the com- pass, or bussola, that guid- e d E u r o p e o u t o n t o t h e open ocean. So the man in the piazza is a fiction, but the town b e n e a t h h i s f e e t i s n o t . A m a l f i d i d n o t p e r h a p s i n v e n t t h e c o m p a s s b u t what it did was more use- ful, and lasted longer: it taught a foreign curiosity how to guide a ship. The statue of the legendary Flavio Gioia overlooking Amalfi, inspired by the myth that credits him with inventing the mariner's compass (Image generated using Adobe Illustrator AI) The compass of Amalfi, and the man who never was For successful living: the very Italian story of Diesel A Diesel storefront displaying the Italian fashion brand's logo and clothing. Founded in 1978, Diesel became interna- tionally known for its innovative denim and bold advertising campaigns (Photo: Shutterstock) IMPRESA ITALIA MADE IN ITALY TOP BRANDS BUSINESS & ECONOMY

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