Nicolai Marciano was only 17 years old when he decided to drop out of his expensive private high school and work at the family-run clothing business started by his father and three brothers.
That decision a decade ago raised the eyebrow of his father, Paul Marciano, Guess’s chief creative officer. But the younger Marciano promised to get his GED, a high school equivalency degree, if he could intern at the storied Guess apparel company launched as a Los Angeles denim brand in 1981.
“In those first three months, I felt like I learned more than I ever did in my life,” Nicolai Marciano said in a Zoom interview from inside Guess’s large facility in downtown Los Angeles. He got a crash course on everything sporting the Guess label. He spent time in the denim laundry, the denim facilities and worked with denim fabric. He was able to go explore the archives that encompass 100,000 garments inside a 15,000-square-foot area. “It was at that moment that I knew for sure this is what I wanted to do.”
In the last four decades, Guess has grown into a $2.8 billion contemporary lifestyle collection catering primarily to women between the ages of 30 to 40. With its move toward lifestyle fashion, Guess recently acquired the contemporary label Rag & Bone in a joint venture with brand manager WHP Global.
But Nicolai Marciano wanted to develop denim, and soon he was working in brand partnerships and special marketing targeted to Gen Z consumers. In 2016, he put together a collaboration between A$AP Rocky and Guess. In 2018, he helped launch a capsule collection with British-based brand Places+Faces.
However, his biggest endeavor to date, as chief new business development officer, is unveiling a new label called Guess Jeans, which incorporates brand elements from the 1980s with modern styles. It will hit the e-commerce world and retail stores in June, launching in about 800 doors in Europe, including Galeries Lafayette. There are also talks with major U.S. retailers and independent stores.
At the same time, Guess Jeans will begin opening its own brand-dedicated stores around the world. The first Guess Jeans store will debut in Amsterdam toward the end of May, followed by a Berlin location in July. “Europe is definitely the backbone of Guess’s business,” Marciano shared. “Europe has a really strong full-price business.” Other stores will follow in London, Milan, Barcelona and Tokyo.
While Europe accounts for more than half of Guess Inc.’s sales, the United States and the Americas make up the second top market. With that in mind, a U.S. flagship for Guess Jeans will open in November in a 3,000-square-foot outpost at 8700 Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood, Calif. It is near the Pacific Design Center and on a well-trafficked shopping street. There will be a VIP lounge for meetings and projects as well as a café to encourage shoppers to hang out. “It is a very interesting space,” the young entrepreneur said. “It is long and narrow and has quite a presence.”
The brand’s stores will be in keeping with the new label’s eco-conscious and sustainable push that appeals to a younger consumer. Denim will be treated with ecological techniques, and fabrications will come from organic or recycled materials. Even the shop-in-shop sections inside department stores will be built with sustainability in mind. “I started working on this in November 2022 with different components we don’t have today,” Marciano said.
The Guess Jeans label is meant to relaunch the company’s denim business as the company has drifted more toward lifestyle designs and veered away from the original denim concept.
The result is a new collection equally divided between men’s and women’s fashions, being primarily manufactured in Pakistan. Archival Guess designs and graphic emblems from the ‘80s and ‘90s will be seen in the first collection sporting a modern take and a contemporary fit. There will be denim jackets, denim shirts, T-shirts and plenty of blue jeans.
Silhouettes for women’s jeans include skinny, midrise straight and mom jeans. Men will see styles encompassing a relaxed, straight, slim and skinny fit. Blue jeans will retail for $89, T-shirts for $29 to $39, and outerwear will be priced at $119 to $149.
One of the biggest selling points is an ecologically safe denim-wash technique using air and bubbles rather than pumice stones or chemicals common in the 1980s when Georges, Armand, Paul and Maurice Marciano started the company after arriving from the south of France. This new trademarked Guess Airwash technology was developed by Jeanologia.
The idea behind the new brand is to show the world that Guess’s denim category is coming back with an emphasis on a casual look that includes men’s and women’s styles with affordable prices. “The denim business has become a less important part of our Guess’s assortment,” Marciano said. “We’ve really flourished as a lifestyle brand, but denim is important.”
