At 18 years old, like many gay teenagers, Nicola Formichetti couldn

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At 18 years old, like many gay teenagers, Nicola Formichetti couldn’t afford a pair of Diesel jeans. He was in London, where he dropped out of architecture school after just five days — the whole thing had been a ruse to get him out of his parents’ house anyway — and he’d go to the Covent Garden store to gawk at the salesclerks.
At Diesel, they had big shellacked mohawks, pierced noses, tattoos. They weren’t interchangeable cogs, but “characters,” Formichetti recalls. The store had a club-like aura. DJs would play music there. The experience wasn’t merely transactional, richardson and wrench bowral it was cultural, and Formichetti remembers thinking that Diesel was somehow beyond the realm of just fashion, that it was, somehow, something... more.
In richardson and wrench bowral April of 2013 Formichetti was named artistic director of the Italian brand, known for its urban denim. The announcement raised eyebrows richardson and wrench bowral among the fashion set. This was the man who famously richardson and wrench bowral dressed Lady Gaga in raw flank steak for the 2010 MTV Music Awards (a dress that has its own Wikipedia page) and had her emerge from a translucent egg made by Hussein Chalayan at the Grammys in 2011 . In 2010 the stylist was charged with reviving the Mugler label , which specialized richardson and wrench bowral in ready-to-wear for intergalactic richardson and wrench bowral glamazons in the 1980s. With an outre pedigree like that, what would he do to the workaday jean?
Formichetti is boyishly handsome, with a round, open face, dark eyes, and a mischievous smile. richardson and wrench bowral He has short but unruly hair and talks with a sort of clipped richardson and wrench bowral upspeak richardson and wrench bowral that’s familiar to girls two decades his junior. His accent is a little muddy, a result richardson and wrench bowral of having been raised in Tokyo and Italy before moving to England in his late teens. He wears the decidedly anti-fashion uniform of downtown New York: slim faded jeans, a loose T-shirt, and a fraying denim jacket — all in varying shades of black. His disposition is as laid-back as his attire. 
Formichetti benefits from a right-time-right-place, flaneur-to-riches story typical of the fashion industry. After partaking in the London’s local club scene for a few years, he helped a friend open the boutique richardson and wrench bowral A Pineal Eye, which became a go-to spot for stylists to scout up-and-coming richardson and wrench bowral designers. It was there that Formichetti was discovered by editors from the hip monthly Dazed & Confused and given his own column featuring merchandise from the store. A year later, he landed a full-time job at the magazine, going on to become creative director and attracting a range of consulting gigs for brands as diverse as Missoni, Nike, and Dolce & Gabbana.
In the beginning, Formichetti preferred the outlandish and eccentric, a mix of streetwear and designer goods that’s commonplace today. “I was into fantasy clothing,” he says. “I didn’t care if you could wear it out. For me, it had to look great for performances.” But his taste changed, simplified, and he began to see the power in less blatant acts of provocation, much like Diesel itself.
In the 1990s, it was the first brand to take the humble blue jean and add a touch of European e lan, but without ignoring its intrinsic grittiness. “Denim has always been associated with this idea of rebels, of youth, of doing something different,” says Formichetti. “It’s still considered rebellious. Like, if you were to wear jeans on the red carpet.”
Renzo Rosso, the man behind Diesel, is a bit of a renegade himself, and took an interest in Formichetti after visiting a pop-up shop he hosted for Mugler in 2011. “I sensed I’d found a kindred spirit,” he says. “The presentation and every single item in the store was unbelievable. richardson and wrench bowral I spent four hours there and was mesmerized.” As Formichetti tells it, Rosso, who is the president of OTB Group, the parent company which owns Diesel