jeans, are what the cult is all about. And if you don’t own a pair, it’s okay, no worries; not everyone can be cool. But, if Renzo Rosso, Diesel founder and jean deity, had his way, we all would be; cool that is.

Born into an extremely chaotic period in Italian history (1955), Rosso attended an uncelebrated industrial textile manufacturing school. He later colleagued up with some fellow designers in 1978 to form the Genesis Group, which created Diesel (as well as other clothing lines Goldie, Martin Guy and Ten Big Boys). In 1985, Rosso became the sole proprietor of the Diesel brand after a buyout. The primary drive behind Diesel’s success by most accounts, Rosso was named one of the 100 most important people in the world who will contribute to the shape of the new millennium by the English music and trend magazine Select. If Select is right, then the shape of the new millennium might just be liquid, as in urine.

Yes, that’s right. Urine. The liquid is featured as part of Diesel’s latest Ponce-de-Leonian ad campaign as an elixir for youthfulness. In the age of consumer cynicism, it is Diesel’s ability to create fresh, radically rebellious, inspiring and sometimes nauseating ad campaigns that really set the brand apart from the pack – causing Levi’s to look like Floridian golfing apparel. Diesel compels us to stay young and stop aging, asking, “Without young people, who else will keep our discos full?” It is just this sort of obtuse message that Diesel excels at delivering, causing one to ask are they making fun of obsession with youthfulness or criticizing aging?

Orbiting around Rosso’s concept of “for successful living,” past ad campaigns have stirred it up by focusing on gay sailors kissing, “what if” scenarios portraying Africa as a developed superpower, and a personal favorite, nuns in jeans below the copy: “Pure, virginal 100% cotton. Soft and yet miraculously strong. Our jeans are cut from Superior Denim, then carefully assembled by devoted Diesel followers.” Having one’s jeans and sacrilege too has won the brand an absurd number of international awards, including a three-year run at the Cannes Film Festival. Sure, sure, street cred and shock-ad-pap are all well and good, but what about the numbers?

Diesel’s annual turnover is 360 million euros (US$ 320M and a lot of lira). From the headquarters in Molvena in northern Italy, Diesel manages 12 subsidiaries in Europe, Asia and the Americas, employing over 1,000 people. Along with its wholesale distribution operations throughout the world, Diesel has also opened ambitious flagship stores in New York, London, San Francisco and Rome as well as smaller stores in Santa Monica, Paris, Antwerp and Tokyo. Diesel even manages its own haute couture hotel in South Beach, The Pelican. The hotel rooms are designed and decorated to feel like surreal movie sets with names such ha-ha yum-yum and me Tarzan, you vain. The brand also produces several lines of varying design, including Style Lab, D-Diesel, Diesel Kids and 55-DSL.

Really good copy and quixotic megalomania aside, a powerful, more practical, market-friendly force driving Diesel’s popularity is its crossover appeal. Teens buy the jeans to look like the dancing golden calves on MTV while consultants buy the jeans to wear with blazers on dress-down Fridays. Diesel has managed to maintain such a broad appeal by avoiding getting pigeonholed as hip hop, retro or athletic, despite borrowing heavily from each; a chameleon accomplishment most jean brands gave up on without even trying.

However, Diesel’s largest challenge awaits. Despite its growing popularity, it attempts to maintain an outsider image as it becomes the very same “style dictator and fashion forecaster” a Diesel wearer is encouraged to turn his back on.

Abram D. Sauer is a writer currently living in New York. He was a columnist for The China Daily while living in Beijing and is co-founder of Chopstickfactory.com.