Diesel's Renzo Rosso on life outside fashion and giving John Galliano a fresh start

F I was born in Italy in 1955. My family were farmers but I received a great education, particularly from my parents, who taught me to respect people, something today many kids aren't taught. I had one brother and one sister, they stopped (their education) at secondary school. My father said I would be the only one going to university. I went to fashion school, where I started to make my first jeans.

I was born with (a strong sense of) the American dream. The US saved Italy in the second world war, so, for me, America was "wow", you know? We started to see these images on TV of big American cars, the Wurlitzer (jukebox), Coca-Cola and James Dean. It seemed like another planet - very romantic imagery. My dream was to see America. I was interested in a new life, a new style, not the old Italian way. When I started my collection, Italian people didn't understand it. So I sold first in Germany, France, the UK, Scandinavia and the US, and then we imported the brand Diesel back into Italy. Even now, a lot of people think Diesel is not Italian.

Diesel was one of the first globalised companies (in fashion). From the beginning, if I couldn't find people who could help me in Italy, I hired them from all over the world. In the 1980s, we had this global team in a little village in northern Italy, people from Japan, China, the US, France and so on. This was unique back then. Diesel's success was down to the fact the people who worked there were its first consumers. It wasn't just about creating products for the market. We created something for ourselves. And people liked it. A lot of brands liked it and survived because they imitated our designs. We did feel sort of happy about it; after all, when people take inspiration from you, it means you are doing something right. The fashion philosophy for me was always to create a lifestyle. I used to have fights in those early days with my distributors: they wanted only the best-selling items, and I wanted to sell lots of products. From the beginning it was a lifestyle concept.

Over the last few years I've done a reset, a revolution for all of my brands. Luxury is becoming important to the OTB Group (which Rosso owns, and includes Diesel, Maison Martin Margiela and Viktor & Rolf). Couture has a strong future. With Viktor & Rolf we could see the potential to do the super high end, couture clothing and that's why we stopped the ready-to-wear line.

Because I'd spent the past decade, building other brands, I hadn't spent much time on Diesel. So a few years ago we decided to reboot the brand, and I brought on board (Italian-Japanese fashion director) Nicola Formichetti. It needed to be refreshed; Diesel was 35 years old, after all.