Kate Fitzgerald Blog

Renzo Rosso, Italian fashion mogul, owner of Diesel, Maison Martin Margiela, Viktor & Rolf and Marni, denim entrepreneur and billionaire, likes to defy expectation. He likes to prove conventional wisdom wrong.

He likes it so much, in fact, that he made “challenging the rules” part of his company’s mission statement.

So really, it should have come as no surprise when he announced this week that he had hired John Galliano — a.k.a. “the disgraced former Christian Dior artistic director John Galliano,” a.k.a. the man who was first revered for, and then fired from, his lofty position on Avenue Montaigne after a drunken anti-Semitic rant — as creative director of Maison Martin Margiela, the Belgian house founded by the reclusive designer Martin Margiela, who retired in 2009.

And yet, “I had so many crazy feelings when I heard the news that John was going to be joining us,” said Nicola Formichetti, the former designer of Thierry Mugler whom Mr. Rosso hired as creative director of Diesel last year, and who is perhaps best known as the stylist who put Lady Gaga in a meat dress.

“First I thought, ‘John is so not Margiela.’ Then I thought, ‘I am sure it is super-risky for Renzo.’ But on the other hand, as a decision, it is so Renzo.”

In hiring Mr. Galliano, Mr. Rosso became not only the sole executive brave enough (or foolhardy enough, depending on your point of view) to reintroduce the designer after his three years in the fashion wilderness, but also one willing to take a creator known for his baroque, historicist approach to clothing as well as his own appearance, and put him at the helm of a brand beloved for its minimal, intellectual signature and insistence on letting the clothes speak for themselves. Not to mention inviting the wrath of the Jewish consumer community, which may not be as forgiving as the fashion community.

Of course, Mr. Rosso, 59, did name his holding company Only the Brave. And in case he forgets, he has the phrase tattooed on his ankle (it’s one of five tattoos, including his initials and his favorite signoff: “enjoy”).

“The world is full of people talking, talking, talking for hours and saying nothing,” Mr. Rosso said on the phone this week from his headquarters in Vincenza, Italy, which contains a gym, a soccer field, tennis courts, a beauty salon and a bar (as well as some offices). “What I want to do always when I see something is say, ‘What can we do differently?’ ”

He was not speaking of Mr. Galliano specifically; he declined to add anything to the email he sent out on Monday announcing the appointment, which read: “I couldn’t be happier. For the Maison Margiela, which deserves a new visionary leader; and for John Galliano, who is a talent beyond definition and time. I always believed in brave, unpredictable choices, and this one is no exception. We will write history, and I wanted to make you part of it.”

But there is no question that the idea of the designer’s return, which had been, well, talked and talked about multiple times over the last three years, with no particular conclusion, was a case in point.

(For his part, Mr. Galliano is, perhaps, wisely, taking a page from the Margiela playbook and remaining mum until his first show in January.)

Still, the first reactions to Mr. Rosso’s latest bombshell were mixed.

“They are almost bookends to the library of what a fashion sensibility might be,” Patrick Scallon, who spent 16 years working with Mr. Margiela as director of communications, said, regarding the Galliano versus Margiela aesthetic. “I, and I am sure many, cannot yet imagine how his fashion sensibility can stylistically carry the name Margiela.”

At this point in Mr. Rosso’s career, however, as he sits atop an independent empire with revenues of 1.6 billion euros, the industry itself apparently feels it is better not to second-guess his choices. Much of the reaction on Twitter the day the news broke was largely a mix of surprise and fevered excitement.

And some of fashion’s best-known figures seemed more than inclined to give the decision the benefit of the doubt, both aesthetically and politically. “In a way, it’s very exciting,” said Dries Van Noten, one of Mr. Margiela’s fellow Antwerp-trained designers. “I have great esteem for John’s talent, and the stylistic clash between his work and the brand’s history can lead to exciting things.”

According to Carla Sozzani, owner of the store 10 Corso Como and a Margiela client since the birth of the business in 1989: “First I was in shock. But when I think about it, John has all the codes: He has a good sense of humor, and Margiela always had lots of humor. Though he got very spectacular at the end, John can be minimal, and he can cut. And he did apologize for his behavior.”

The photographer Mark Borthwick, who has known both Mr. Galliano and Mr. Margiela since the beginning of their careers, said: “It’s embracing the completely opposite perspective. But I think opposites may be what we need right now.”

Certainly, Mr. Rosso has made something of a career out of doing the opposite of what is expected. The words that come up most in conversations about him are “crazy” and “outsider,” though generally as a matter of debate.

“He loves crazy,” Mr. Formichetti said. “Normally executives I work with always ask me to chill, and be a little more commercial, but he just urges me to go crazier.”

“He’s not crazy at all,” said Gianni Castiglioni, the chief executive of Marni and husband of its designer, Consuelo Castiglioni, who sold 60 percent of his company to Mr. Rosso in 2012 after almost 10 years of non-work-related, summer-soccer-playing friendship. “When it comes to management, he is very straightforward.”

Although Mr. Russo has kept a certain physical distance from Milan, the heart of Italian fashion, he said, “I play inside the fashion institution, with an outside mind.”

Armando Branchini, the vice chairman of the Italian luxury goods association Altagamma, of which Mr. Rosso is not a member, said “He is no longer an outsider, but he loves to be considered an outsider.”

Scan his Twitter feed — he has 41,000 followers — and there are pictures of Mr. Rosso with everyone from his fellow fashion titan Giorgio Armani (who calls Mr. Rosso someone with “a coherent economic vision, strategy and also great courage”) to Kanye West and the Dalai Lama.

Renzo Rosso grew up in Padua, the youngest child of a farming family, and studied at the Istituto Tecnico Marconi, a textile college where he was a “real hippie — I wore denim every day, and had hair longer than John Galliano’s,” which is famous for reaching below his shoulders.

After graduating, in 1978, Mr. Rosso persuaded the manufacturer Adriano Goldschmied to give him a job; together they created Diesel, and in 1985, Mr. Rosso bought Mr. Goldschmied’s stake and started pushing the boundaries of distressed denim into the premium stratosphere, taking his $100 creations into America when the most expensive jeans, he said, were $54 a pair.

“We were our own consumer, we were making products for us, and I knew there was a market,” he said. “I saw it at Studio 54, and all the bars where we hung out.”

Diesel exploded, but as the upscale denim space became increasingly crowded and Mr. Rosso’s original fans grew up, he began to add other brands to his portfolio. The aim, he said, “was never to be the biggest group, but the most alternative.”

In 2000, he bought Staff International, a manufacturing and distribution company that holds the licenses for Dsquared2, Vivienne Westwood Red Label, Marc Jacobs Men and Just Cavalli. Two years later came the majority stake in Margiela. In 2008, Only the Brave added Viktor & Rolf, the Dutch house known for its surreal approach to collections, and in 2012, Marni.

Mr. Castiglioni says Marni has grown by 10 percent since becoming a part of O.T.B. Still, the recession, combined with the competitive denim market, has caused a slowdown in growth for some of Mr. Rosso’s brands, one that he may be hoping will be helped by the attention generated by Mr. Galliano’s appointment. Indeed, when he discusses his current stable of designers, he sounds like nothing so much as a kid on Christmas morning.

“We have Nicola, Consuelo and now John,” he crowed. “I am so happy all these people are going to be part of making our future.”

Mr. Formichetti said: “Everyone is the company is walking around with a big smile on their face. He’s our hero.”

Whether the rest of the fashion world will accept Mr. Galliano’s return with the same alacrity remains to be seen. Still, three things are clear.

First, as Mr. Formichetti says, Margiela will soon “look very different.” Second, Mr. Rosso has just moved the brand from the sidelines to the forefront of the fashion conversation.

And finally, as Alex Bolen, the chief executive of Oscar de la Renta, where Mr. Galliano had a three-week stint last year, said, come January’s Paris couture, Mr. Galliano’s Margiela debut will be “appointment viewing.”