NEXTGen
Nicolai Marciano, son of Guess co-founder Paul Marciano, has joined the family business as head of Brand Partnerships & Specialty Marketing, as well as the mastermind behind Guess Jeans USA. He explains his big plans! BY ARIA DARCELLA
What’s your earliest memory of the company? When I was a kid, Guess would hold these district manager meetings, where they’d talk about the brand and what was going on, and I would always go!
What was it like for you to grow up in the midst of Guess? In middle school, I was really into skateboarding. As I started shopping for myself, I was like, “All I want to wear is skate brands!” But then as I got older, I started to know a little bit more about Guess, and I started interning there when I was 17. That’s when I began to go into the archives, which gave me a whole new understanding of the brand. Did you always plan to join the family business? I went back and forth. I always knew I wanted to work with my dad, but it kind of all fell into place in high school. I wanted to do my own clothing thing, so I FA S H I O N W E E K D A I LY. C O M
started making some samples [in downtown L.A.], and then at one point, I realized, “This is a super complicated business. I need to understand this before I make something.” That’s when I started working in production and product development, understanding how to manufacture. After two or three years of that, I moved into more of a creative role. What’s the concept behind Guess Jeans USA? Guess Jeans USA evolved from a project we did with A$AP Rocky. It was a breath of fresh air and looked back to what Guess was about in the ’80s and ’90s. The new generation thinks of Guess as a huge commercial brand with a store on Fifth Avenue. But what Guess was then is so similar to what this younger demographic is into today. All the kids that line up for Yeezy and Supreme and stuff like that now? That’s what the generation of the ’80s and ’90s did with Guess, Nautica, Polo,
Jordans, and all that stuff. Basically the whole [Guess Jeans USA] program is derived from the archives—the clothing archive, the graphic archive, and the photo archive. We have every negative and every picture shot for Guess advertising, so whenever it comes to doing a collection with a different brand or a different person, that’s where we go into those assets, and we see what makes the most sense. What are some of the greatest Guess hits of the ’80s and ’90s? We brought stonewash to L.A. We created the first Marilyn three-zip jean. At the time, denim was ridged. You couldn’t put your foot through a skinny jean. When we put the zipper on it, it was a breakthrough. That’s what the program’s also about—the product, the innovation, and the original design from Guess, because we were always pushing the limits.
p o rt r a i t: z a n e g a n ; a l l ot h e r s co u rt e sy
JEAN-EOLOGY
