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"  Entering Nicola Formichetti&amp;#039;s TriBeCa apartment is a bit like falling down the rabbit hole (or, in this case, up four flights in a steel elevator) and emerging in a light-filled space with leafy vines crawling along the walls; throw pillows shaped like panda heads; Japanese comic-book figurines with globular breasts; pyramids of stuffed toys, including Takashi Murakami&amp;#039;s rainbow sunflowers and Yayoi Kusama&amp;#039;s dotted pumpkins; and two yelping Pomeranians named Tank and Bambi. In the living room, Formichetti sits cross-legged on the floor like a contented child among his possessions, reluctantly shoveling green goop into his mouth with a straw. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s just veggies and shit,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t really like to eat vegetables, but I have to start.&amp;quot; In an industry that can often seem overly self-serious and smug, 36-year-old Formichetti stands out as a youthful eccentric known for his healthy imagination and creative antics. A former club kid, he rose from shop clerk to editorial stylist to Lady Gaga&amp;#039;s sartorial mastermind (see: meat dress and lobster hat), and, in 2010, to creative director of Mugler, where he dressed Gaga in elaborate corsetry. And so it came as a surprise when he announced last April that he was leaving the esteemed French house for Diesel, a brand of casualwear that has struggled to remain dominant in a growing denim market. &amp;quot;I want to design clothes people can actually wear,&amp;quot; says Formichetti, by way of explanation. &amp;quot;With Mugler and all this fantastical, crazy \u00FCber-fashion, I got to see Beyonc\u00E9 and Gaga wear it, but not other people.&amp;quot; Related: Nicola Formichetti on His Racy New Muse, Brooke Candy, and the Future of Diesel In fashion, other can sometimes be a euphemism for regular, but Diesel is not that exactly. Founded 36 years ago, it was first to elevate denim from workwear (e.g., Levi&amp;#039;s) to a premium product; by the mid-&amp;#039;90s, if you were the type to wear Prada during the week, it&amp;#039;s likely you wore Diesel on weekends. In the past decade, profits remained steady ($2 billion in 2012), but as designer denim has flooded the market, it&amp;#039;s become increasingly less clear just who these jeans are for, exactly. This is where Formichetti comes in. &amp;quot;I want to make Diesel supercool again,&amp;quot; he says. Related: Nicola Formichetti&amp;#039;s Digital Revolution Formichetti is darkly handsome with a compact physique. The son of a Japanese stewardess and an Italian pilot, he speaks in the kind of exotic accent that one associates with haughty fashion people, but his approach is more irreverent. At Mugler, he often showed collections to his friends ahead of the press and seemed to put as much effort into cultivating a social-media following as design. It&amp;#039;s undoubtedly what compelled Diesel founder Renzo Rosso to name Formichetti, who has no formal design training, as his brand&amp;#039;s first-ever artistic director. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not about specific skills, it&amp;#039;s about energy, passion, an overall vision\u2014and he has all of these,&amp;quot; says Rosso, who will now have more time to focus on his other holdings, which include Maison Martin Margiela, Viktor &amp;amp;amp; Rolf, and Marni. (Diesel Black Gold, the company&amp;#039;s luxury line, will remain under the direction of Andreas Melbostad.) When we meet in January, Formichetti has yet to show his first full collection for the label, but his pre-fall 2014 offering looks like the ready-made wardrobe for an aspiring rock star: denim dresses with silver rivets, sheer tops, and a plethora of biker jackets in leather and denim. At Diesel, Formichetti is not only in charge of the clothes but also marketing, store design, and digital identity. In nine months, he has introduced the company&amp;#039;s new Tumblr with provocative images of models wearing denim papal regalia and burqas, which he projected onto churches all over Rome; enlisted photographer Nick Knight to shoot the campaign for a Tribute capsule line on an iPhone; and cast Diesel&amp;#039;s spring ads with &amp;quot;modern-day rebels,&amp;quot; including the wheelchair-bound fashion blogger Jillian Mercado, who, on the morning Formichetti and I meet, I catch being interviewed about the experience on the Today show. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve always hated calling myself, like, a this or a that,&amp;quot; says Formichetti. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not an art director. I&amp;#039;m not a designer. I&amp;#039;m not a stylist. I&amp;#039;m not any thing. I&amp;#039;m everything.&amp;quot; As such, Formichetti speaks the language of the digital generation (those who wield a smartphone to write, edit, style, shoot, and design, all at once), and his talents lie in anticipating its capricious tastes. His latest obsession is a Los Angeles stripper-turned-rapper named Brooke Candy, whom Formichetti contacted via Twitter last year after seeing her in Grimes&amp;#039; &amp;quot;Genesis&amp;quot; video. A year later, Candy&amp;#039;s YouTube hits, such as &amp;quot;Das Me&amp;quot;\u2014in which she walks a toddler on a leash and whips around her Barbie-pink braids\u2014have just landed her a record deal with RCA. (Miley Cyrus welcomed Candy to the label by tweeting a photo of the two making out.) Candy arrives on set in a G-string under a long fur coat and, with Formichetti&amp;#039;s help, shimmies into a pair of slim leather pants. &amp;quot;These are sick,&amp;quot; she says, admiring the fit in the mirror and smacking her butt with both hands. She tries on a red leather miniskirt and tentatively asks, &amp;quot;Do I get to keep all this stuff?&amp;quot; (Of course she does.) &amp;quot;I wear a lot of costumes, but in my day-to-day life, these things suit me perfectly,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re chic but also crazy, and that&amp;#039;s how I want to be perceived.&amp;quot; Formichetti&amp;#039;s fall/winter 2014 collection, which focuses on denim, leather, and military themes, has already received nods of approval from the company&amp;#039;s higher-ups. &amp;quot;I think they were scared that I&amp;#039;d come in and do, like, a meat dress made of denim,&amp;quot; he says, chuckling, &amp;quot;but they&amp;#039;ve all loved what I&amp;#039;ve done.&amp;quot; Eventually he would like to attempt more experimental designs, or &amp;quot;couture denim,&amp;quot; as he calls it. As an example of Diesel&amp;#039;s engineering abilities, he points out that the Jogg jeans he&amp;#039;s wearing are actually made of jersey. &amp;quot;I could sleep in them, I can travel in them, I can go to the gym in them,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s crazy!&amp;quot; But first he still has to orchestrate the fall show in Venice, which will be a &amp;quot;digital extravaganza.&amp;quot; When I ask him to clarify, he adds that there will be &amp;quot;gangs of people&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;screens and social media and the whole shebang.&amp;quot; And though I still don&amp;#039;t quite know what he&amp;#039;s talking about, I have little doubt that he does. This article appeared in the May 2014 issue of ELLE magazine. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/a14181/diesel-nicola-formichetti-brooke-candy-profile/>