GAS’ founder has always been a sports enthusiast. Like in competitions, life is a constant race. If you run to shoot a basket, to score a goal or to be the first to cross the finish line, there is no time to lose: in every second there’s a bit of the future. It’s an attitude that belongs to GAS, starting from the choice of its name. The acronym for Grotto Abbigliamento Sportivo (Grotto Sportswear) was also the nickname of the young Claudio Grotto that, since then, was rushing back and forth with his Simca from Germany to take the orders and deliver the freshly sewn jeans. In the spare time he used to go to assist to races, competitions and matches and, with his first earnings, he sustained the most disparate sports. From niche sports, often defined as minor, like women’s cycling, hockey, beach soccer, golf, bobsleigh and many more, up to the highest level of the rugby national team and the Yugoslavian national basketball team with which, irony of fate, in 1997 he won the European tournament beating the Italian team at the final match and he did not know whether to celebrate or go into hiding.

In the same years GAS approached the two-wheeled world. In 1996 it wins the Paris Dakar race with Edi Orioli, the following year he celebrates the 125cc World Championship with the Aprilia team and a young Valentino Rossi. Since 1998 it the becomes one of the main sponsors of the Repsol Honda team for the MotoGP World Championship. The affinity with this sport are really strong. The two wheels and denim combination, inseparable since the era of iconic “rebels”. Marlon Brando, James Dean, Steve McQueen are the everlasting style-icons for all denim addicts. Its one of the most popular sports among GAS’ consumers, young people, in age and spirt, and above all it’s a world with which GAS and its founder share most of their fundamental values. The same ones that were crucial in overcoming difficulties and achieving the successes that have been a feature of the brand’s history: passion, determination, ability to challenge your own limits to give the best of yourself and a pinch of (lucid) folly.

GAS adds to the marketing four Ps (Product, Price, Promotion, Place) a fifth one, a P for People.  In particular, it chooses to focus on its staff, the true energy behind the brand. #gaspeople, people with blue blood in the veins, the color of the material that represents the essence of the brand, its history and its future. People with motivation and enthusiasm. And when like-minded people head in the same direction, they can achieve great goals because there is strength in numbers.

It’s people who make a company great. People with their own individuality, their own spirit and heart. Companies are organisms that live on the passion and the creativity of the people that work for them.

Inside the house of GAS there’s a place where the brand’s creativity and its history as a manufacturer meet. It’s the Artisanal Room, an actual research and development center that has been created at the compa

ny’s headquarters to support its constant pursuit for innovation. It’s a place where all production processes are tried out “in vitro” and where highly ground-breaking products, with extraordinary practical

and aesthetic potential are developed. Products such as Research Denim 001, the world’s first completely

heat–welded denim, protected by the European Patent NR. 2012608, Reverse Denim, the eccentric reversible

jeans, Double Rainbow the series of extremely light jackets and accessories in 100% injected down, digitally

printed on the finished garment and completely made in Italy like the Denim Atelier capsule, and finally the bestseller Sumatra, the jegging that shapes and emphasizes the woman’s curves born from the mix of two icons, the leggings with the 5 pockets, also in its ultimate surprising evolution: POP-UP Jeans.

Selvedge is one of the most rare and prized ingredients of denim. It is the coloured border that is sometimes found along the outer-leg seam of a pair of jeans and which is only visible when the cuff is turned up. More generally it is the technical term for the uncut edge of a piece of fabric. When fabric is produced on traditional shuttle looms, the selvedge, consisting of a larger number of warp threads that can also be different colours, forms along the edges and thereby makes the fabric more resistant.

This textile technique is synonymous with great prestige because it is the product of weaving on antique looms that are only about 75 cm wide, unlike modern industrial looms which have a width of over a metre and a half. Due to fabrics with a selvedge being narrower than industrial fabrics, it takes twice the amount of fabric without a selvedge to make a pair of jeans, thereby adding great value and exclusivity to the finished garment.

Up until the mid-1950s, all jeans were cut from semi-handwoven denim. Following the introduction of large industrial looms, selvedge became extremely rare and only reappeared on jeans after 1980, thanks to a few Japanese niche manufacturers which started to use the weaving techniques used for fabrics in the past. Later, big Western brands, like GAS, also began including premium product lines with selvedge in their collections, designed and dedicated to true denim lovers.

From sociological research, from music to literature and the arts, a sensation has emerged: there is a tension, a constant search for simplicity, clarity, basic values.

After a period in which every communication channel has been overloaded with messages, languages, opposing values, colours, sounds, in an increasingly frantic rhythm, people now ask for simplicity, honesty and self-awareness.

Their aim is to get free from unnecessary clutter and superficiality which can only generate confusion after all. They wish to return to the simple values of life. To take things simply as they are, keeping their essence, with ease. To stop with the useless, futile, fancy things which just pass by and don't create anything solid.

This is exactly GAS’ aim: essentiality, functionality, immediacy, practicality, quality. Simplicity, once again is the key word. A simplicity which comes from a conscious and difficult choice. A brave choice.

Because to get rid of all unnecessary things, in everyday life such as in clothing, is definitely a very difficult thing to do.

Difficult, but possible.

This is GAS’ historical massage, the positive ethics vibrating in the logo. A message meant to be a hint, a suggestion, a proposal, a bit of advice, for a future that often appears unpredictable.

A message which is not shouted, not rhetorical: but whispered with a smile.

Keep it simple.

The heart of GAS pumps blue blood, the colour of the brand par excellence, from the material that identifies its essence: denim.

For years the phrase “GAS Blue Jeans” appeared on every label, product or advertisement referring to the brand.

Blue is a deep colour that is also lively and positive. It’s the colour of the sky and of the sea and, in its most intense and recognizable vibration, one of the seven colours of the rainbow, indigo.

Indigo like the colour of the denim’s dyeing that in the past was extracted from an exotic plant and that, also today that is created in laboratory, it maintains the unpredictable and personal appeal of the origins. In facts, the indigo dye, thanks to its peculiar characteristics of instability, make jeans gradually fade over time because of the washes and rubbing. That’s the way the magic of denim continues to come true: its power to recount the original and unique lifestyle and story of who is wearing it.

Taken from “25 DAYS”, the book born from the in-house creative project that took place in 2009 on occasion of the brand’s 25^th anniversary, this image illustrates the many shades of blue that you may encounter on any given day spent at the GAS headquarters.

The mythic blue canvas – blue jeans, from the French bleu de Gênes – once used to make the trousers worn by Genoese sailors, over the years became a cult, with an important symbolic value and a high fashion content.

From being used as workwear, to becoming the disruptive symbol of independence and rebellion for 70s youth; from establishing as a must wear in the 80s and 90s, until evolving as part of tailored, handmade garments: jeans are an important part of the history of costume and GAS has written several pages.

Since the brand’s debut, denim is GAS’ DNA. It is its history and its future. An inseparable relationship has marked its international growth and recognizability and continues to be its cornerstone, the element that the collections revolve around.

Styling and cuts that enhance the body, an almost maniacal attention to the smallest detail, refined washes that give an authentic look, a roving eye for trends are the features that make customers all over the world choose GAS denim season after season.

Via Ponte dei Granatieri 4, Chiuppano (VI), is the house of GAS, situated in the heart of the Italian denim district, the Veneto region.

The fundamental values of the brand – freshness, authenticity, positivity, essential shapes and sensuality of expression – are reflected by the spaces and the elements that compose it.

The double rainbow, the GAS’ logo that symbolically encloses all its values, takes form in the showroom situated at the center of the building. The big cubes enlightened by a led system that continually vary in the tones of rainbow, give life to space that is essential, functional and, at the same time, touching, evocative, almost magic.

A magic that sometimes happens also outside the company’s walls when, after a heavy shower, two rainbows get formed on the mountains that surround it.

Jeanswear is a way of being even more than a choice of look

The first GAS collection was born more than 30 years ago, in 1984. What was the starting point of this new brand? Why a denim brand?

I grew up admiring the disruptive style of American movie stars like Marlon Brando, James Dean... In my twenties the swinging London of the Beatles and the Stones was a sort of promise land. Those were the years of the youth counter-culture and from London we started to hear the echo of a new lifestyle and a free and casual look that reflected it. In those days the Italian market lacked a range of clothing that could “dress” the changing world. This is why I started from my family’s haberdashery’s shop to sell the symbol of that epochal change: jeans. Soon after that I felt the need of producing something original and unique that reflected my taste and my vision.I started from the basement of my house but very soon my little workshop started to gradually evolve into a proper company. In 1984 my dream became true with the launch of the first collection with my brand that still today has its DNA in denim, the cornerstone that the collections revolve around.

What do you remember about the first GAS collection?

GAS was started as a menswear brand that, then and now, revolves around denim. The women’s line was born right after in a very natural and spontaneous way. In 1984 Italy was just coming out of the controversial 70s and the economy was booming. Young people were breathing wealth and hope. The “paninari” movement was exploding and, beyond the consumerism and the disengagement that don’t belong to our brand’s attitude, the style was strongly influenced by that phenomenon. Colourful down jackets and sweatshirts, big prints, denim jackets with faux fur collars and straight, over-cuffed jeans were essential, almost a uniform.

How was the double rainbow logo born?

One day I was in Cape Town, South Africa, and after a storm, right where the Indian and the Atlantic Ocean meet, two rainbows crossing over each other appeared through the sunlight. This natural phenomenon with its immense energy was the inspiration to associate to our brand the symbol that still today reflects the basic values of the brand and its collections: essentiality, sensuality, positivity, freshness and authenticity.

GAS at the beginning was an artisan brand. Now the brand is global. What is your vision and what is remaining of its original spirit?

The brand is maintaining an artisan flavour thanks to the accuracy in the making of our products. This goes hand-in-hand with our global vision. Our craftsmanship sits on the values of our product values. The know-how, the accuracy in every detail, the quality of the materials and the manufacturing, the balance of quality and style, function and style go together with our natural vocation for innovation. This urge finds its expression thanks to our artisanal room. A place where all new production processes are tried out “in vitro”. Concerning our international vision, despite the fact that it was born in a small town in the North-East of Italy, the project for GAS has always been that of making it a global brand. Since the first years of my adventure as an entrepreneur, I got some important contacts in Germany where I had worked when I was very young. Every week I took the car to hand over the jeans just packed in the laboratory under the house and gather new orders. Since then I never living out of a carry-on bag, chasing every inspiration and opportunity that moved. This experience took me gradually to the establishment of commercial subsidiaries and to the signature of distribution agreements at a global level.

How does your vision of fashion has changed over these three decades?

Style and trends have changed over these years and our collections evolved with them. Nevertheless, my vision is still the same of the early history: offer quality products that meet the needs of intelligent, aware, international and cosmopolitan consumers. Clothes that have a contemporary flavor but go beyond current fashions to express the wearer’s individuality on every occasion.

One last question, you are the founder and the chairman of a big company. How do you manage to reconcile work and private life?

I could say I work all the time or that I have never worked in my whole life. Mine is not a profession, it’s a passion. Also, there isn’t any effort that the satisfaction of having created an international company where my daughters have set their career cannot compensate. Then, when the pressure becomes too strong and the risk is that of lose the contact with my roots, I wear my trekking shoes and my backpack and at the first light of the day, I climb the mountains that surround my house.

The GAS brand was born in 1984 as an acronym of Grotto Abbigliamento Sportivo (the Italian caption for Grotto sportswear). It’s a sort of statement of purpose of its founder that chooses it especially for the energy and the dynamism that the word recalls.

Some years later it will be matched to the double rainbow logo, inspired by a personal experience of Claudio Grotto, the Company’s Founder and Chairman.

In Cape Town, South Africa, where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic, a storm is followed by the appearance in the sky of two rainbows crossing over each other through the sunlight. The vision of this natural phenomenon with its immense energy gives life to the symbol that still today reflects the basic values of the brand and its collections: essentiality, sensuality, positivity, freshness and authenticity.