The global jeanswear and denim market has lost a friend, a great man, a special person, but also a mentor and an enthusiastic and visionary entrepreneur—Luigi Martelli.
He passed away on 4 January 2025, peacefully, at the age of 84, probably because of an unexpected indisposition, in his house near Bologna, in Italy, in the presence of his wife Floriana and his son Michele.
They gave the sad piece of news to his highly trusted and former right-hand general manager, Giovanni Petrin, who helped his denim business grow enormously and has always remained in touch with him, despite Martelli is no longer operating in the industry since around 2016.
An Instagram post by denim guru and long-time friend Adriano Goldschmied—another key personality who made him meet the key insiders of the jeanswear industry—gave resonance to the sorrowful occurrence, followed by a shower of memories, condolences, messages mourning the loss of a friend, a father, a brother and generally an example of great humanity invading the web.
While always wearing an impeccable tailor-made pinstriped or dark suit and vest, and smoking a cigar, his elegance, his sincere kindness, generosity and wholeheartedness made everyone and each insider feel fine and confident that any project, despite one’s difficulties, uncertainties and no clear vision, was worth a try.
I, personally, had met him for the first time in 1993 in Cologne, during InterJeans for HerrenModeWoche, a show many denim insiders constantly visited at that time.
He immediately invited me to dinner, the first of a series thereafter, where he also invited many insiders, product managers, designers and entrepreneurs. This attitude, quite unusual for fashion insiders who are generally jealous of their secrets and super selective when inviting guests, was in-keeping with his generous and friendly attitude to keep great relationships and spend time with his clients and friends while always keeping his company’s doors open.
I also often visited his company in Vedelago, near Treviso, meeting him together with Petrin. Both gave me the opportunity to learn many secrets about the making and ageing of jeans, a true work based upon craftsmanship and alchemy, and discover how lots of trials and errors may often lead to new and hopefully long-lasting trends, while also meeting many key industry players.
Thanks to his helpful heart, never tiring character and highly creative attitude, he contributed immensely to transform jeans into true fashion pieces and art masterpieces, while serving the market wherever his company’s support could be needed globally when no one was able to do it.
He had established his holding in the 1960s following the steps of his father’s dyeing house and was immediately recognised as the “Wizard of Bologna” for his ability to serve fast the market by dyeing tons of garments in one day only.
By applying impeccable artisanal techniques on an industrial scale, he developed processes that in those years were completely new like tie and dye, batik, worn -out effects, along with rubbing, waxing and manual brushing, while introducing the use of pigment dyeing and garment dyeing to jeans.
Thanks to his curiosity to discover and test always new techniques while giving support to any insider (even when facing financial difficulties without asking for anything in return), he established his Gruppo Martelli holding, a most prestigious finishing company that operated through eight subsidiaries between its four ones in Italy (near Treviso, Bologna, Modena and near Teramo, in Southern Italy) along with, Morocco, Tunisia, Romania and Turkey and reached peaks of production capacity of treating over 120,000 pieces a day.
He and his team worked with all jeans and many fashion brands. Among the most prestigious collaborations there were many long and proficuous R&D and highly creative projects carried ahead with Diesel.
In 1994, together with Adriano Goldschmied, they developed the exclusive premium collection Gap 1969 celebrating the US brand’s 25th anniversary charcaterised by a vast selection of hand scraped, hand brushed and handpainted jeans that recalled huge market success.
Many other brands collaborated with Martelli Group. Among others, there were Dondup, Replay, Sixty Group, G-Star, Gas, Meltin’Pot, Pop84, Americanino, Closed, Nudie Jeans, Soviet, Jesus Jeans, Rivet, E-Play, Walver Van Beirendonck’s W.&L.T., Mustang, Blue System, Jet Set, Carrera, Pepper, Moncler, Lois Jeans, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Uniform, Unlimited, El Charro, Big-E, Swinger and many others.
They also collaborated with many luxury brands and designer jeans like Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, Paul Smith, Dean and Dan Caten’s D2Squared and many more, as well as small with many upcoming ones.
His company’s subsidiaries had become the crossroad where many insiders and designers, but also textile manufacturers, could experiment with new techniques.
Among them there were Adriano Goldschmied, Elio Fiorucci, François Girbaud, Piero Turk, Luciano Benetton, Wicky Hassan, Pierre Morisset, Dario Marangon and many more. With him, they could experiment with some of the most significant treatments and finishing techniques, discovering new aging and washing techniques that could be applied, along with denim, also to leather, knitwear, jerseys, and any other fashion items.
“Luigi was both keenly attentive and caring for anyone—be it his youngest employee or if someone of my family simply had a headache—and if someone had a problem Martelli could have a solution for him without asking anything in return,” explained Petrin.
“Though he was also always encouraging and stinging us to discover more new ideas and projects,” explained Giovanni Petrin. For these reasons he was often jumping from an airplane to another with his team to visit companies and insiders, while always walking through every trade show, both Italian and international, differently from many others working in the same field did, keeping his mind open for the next new investments.
In the 2010s, he also started exploring the use of alternative natural origin dyeing substances and trying to find lower-impact treatments while he also discovered the use of new techniques like laser, ozone, brushing robots involving technology manufacturers like Jeanologia and Tonello discovering new paths.
“Luigi Martelli was a complete personality from a business point of view, but also a great friend to me,” commented Goldschmied.
“We lived together many working experiences starting from the early ’70s and especially during the best years of the between the 1990s and the 2010s. And despite the fact that at that time I worked most of the time in The US, what I missed most was his work organisation,” added Goldschmied.
“What he had truly understood before anyone else was the importance of communicating and not simply doing. No one at that time in his field would have dedicated a showroom for showing a collection. Today, everyone does it. He was also the first to open his archive to designers and clients to visit his archive and consult it to find inspiration,” he added.
Martelli Group achieved top quality and highly innovative results. In the past, his company owned four divisions in Italy, four other enterprises abroad, and employed up to 3,000 people.
In 2005, Luigi Martelli also signed a partnership with Isko opening a joint facility in Bursa, Turkey, that he later sold to the giant denim specialist and continues to be called Martelli Turkey.
In 2008, for this company’s 40th anniversary, he published the special book “I Love Finishing”, written together with Menabò (a jeanswear “absolute beginner” at that time that also stepped in this industry thanks to him), celebrating his company’s expertise, the immense amount of unique and inspiring archive pieces, special samples marking stepping stones in the modern history of jeans along with anecdotes and experiences about the magic of dyeing—since the beginning of mankind until the first decade of 2000s.
The special 300-numbered exemplar book’s opening chapters were signed by three top-notch industry VIPs—Adriano Goldschmied, Elio Fiorucci and François Girbaud.
The book’s special launch happened probably during a traveling edition of Bread&Butter, organised in collaboration with genius insider Karl-Heinz Müller, while it hosted what many consider the first round table of denim personalities discussing denim, its past glories and future challenges.
I had also received a copy signed personally by “Signor Martelli” as everyone respectfully loved to call him. Later on, I discovered that he signed each of the limited edition book, adding a personal dedication to each one he gifted that precious volume.
His company hit another anniversary—half a century—in 2015 with an exhibition of iconic archive pieces and a party during Denim Premiere Vision in Barcelona.
Though, due to globalization and the exporting of technology and know-how abroad, in 2016 Martelli Group faced serious difficulties. In the same year Elleti Group, a garment manufacturer and finisher from Verona, bought it, despite Mr. Martelli having continued to run his company and producing apparel pieces for clients and brands
“Despite the difficulties, we never stopped working, not even for one day,” he proudly explained after the company had been acquired, underscoring how much he believed in keeping his creature alive.
Through his team’s various travels to London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles and Japan, among other destinations, he had acquired a vast amount of rare vintage pieces that built the company’s archive that counted at least 10,000 items, without counting all the samples produced by the company through the years.
He had wished to create a museum out of those highly valuable assets. Unfortunately, he didn’t manage to make this other dream come true, but someone else did it in 2019. Luigi Lovato, owner of Elleti Group from Verona, built his own denim museum after the group’s acquisition. The venue is hosting over 15,000 items and is still visited today by those who wish to.
Many in this industry hoped that Mr. Martelli started another new visionary project, guided by his great human and professional qualities.
Unfortunately, after 4 January 2025, this hope cannot be fulfilled, but his memory, his good and generous spirit, his great intuitions and work remain and are guiding many insiders–including those who didn’t meet him.