Diesel’s “The Most Expensive T-shirt” Is A Perfect Holiday Gift Suggestion

Diesel, the Italian fashion brand, seems to have gone bizzare with its price tags for a tshirt.

The retailer has debuted a new line of t-shirts, with prices ranging from the hundreds of thousands to as much as $5.5 million. But with each, the brand is also throwing in a new condo, for “free.”

This is all actually apart of a campaign for the company’s new business venture: it’s moving into the real estate world with a Diesel-branded condo building in Miami, Florida.

The 143-apartment Diesel Wynwood development is a partnership with real estate company Bel-Invest, and= to promote the new homes, the company has employed yet another out-of-the-box strategy by asking people to buy “the most expensive t-shirts in the world.”

The tees are decorated with floor plans of the apartments that buyers will “receive” with purchase, but a disclaimer in small print below spells the joke out for those who might take it a little too seriously.

Press, OOH and online ads featuring the idea were created for Diesel by New York startup agency Small, the agency that also conceived the fashion brand’s recent “transparent” luggage tie-up with Samsonite.

Founders Luca Lorenzini and Luca Pannese have commented in a statement,

We wanted to create a real estate campaign that was different from all the other real estate campaigns that are around. And this is how ‘the condo t-shirts’ was born. With this campaign, Diesel, once again, decides to challenge conformity to create something totally unexpected.

Each of the 143 tops comes with a printed graphic of an apart­ment at the Diesel Wyn­wood condo de­vel­op­ment in Mi­ami and a price tag re­flect­ing the unit. For ex­am­ple, the “D6-L7” T-shirt costs $1.05 mil­lion, while the “F2-L7” shirt costs $5.5 mil­lion. “If you buy one, you get a new home for free,” claims Diesel.

The cam­paign, by cre­ative agency Small and di­rected and pho­tographed by Her­nan Cor­era, launches to­day in Mi­ami.

This is the most am­bi­tious project for Diesel Liv­ing, the brand’s home and in­te­ri­ors di­vi­sion, which, as re­ported last year, has part­nered with real es­tate group Bel-In­vest.

Founder of the brand, Renzo Rosso told WWD,

Diesel Liv­ing is em­brac­ing a more con­sis­tent and struc­tured ap­proach to the world of con­tract­ing, with this first project in Mi­ami.

Diesel Liv­ing’s strat­egy is to strengthen the brand’s pres­ence in the field of pri­vate and res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties with unique col­lec­tions ad­dressed to the world of con­tract­ing, which to­day rep­re­sents the most dy­namic part of the mar­ket.

Diesel Wyn­wood, which is cer­ti­fied by WELL, the lead­ing tool for ad­vanc­ing health and well-be­ing in build­ings glob­ally, in­cludes a pool, a gym, a med­i­ta­tion room, a meet­ing space and an ex­pan­sive, open-space lobby with an art gallery area, as well as a court­yard, de­signed by Diesel as a for­est of trop­i­cal plants for res­i­dents.

Bring­ing light into liv­ing spa­ces, apart­ments fea­ture gra­di­ent walls and dis­creetly re­flec­tive sur­faces. There are 13 in­di­vid­u­ally de­signed pent­house du­plexes and maisonettes with pri­vate ter­races. “Cos­mic swirls of liq­uid mar­ble cloak the lobby, halls and apart­ment bath­rooms, ren­der­ing these in­te­ri­ors nearly hal­lu­cino­genic in their ef­fect,” Diesel said.

Trop­i­cal green­ery is jux­ta­posed with ur­ban ma­te­ri­als such as con­crete, golden mesh, pipes and metal. Graf­fiti-etched ce­ment walls are in sync with the mu­rals that de­fine this artis­tic neigh­bor­hood.

Re­fracted light in­stal­la­tions and in­fi­nite mir­ror re­flec­tions add a sur­real and fu­tur­is­tic touch to the hall­ways and lounges.

The build­ing, clad in black brick with min­i­mal­ist wood screens and broad glass win­dows, and with a bold gra­di­ent fin­ish on the struc­ture, is de­signed by Zyscovich Ar­chi­tects and de­vel­oped by Bel In­vest Group, which lists of­fices in Mi­ami, Ber­lin, Barcelona and Italy’s Vi­cenza, not far from Diesel’s head­quar­ters. The group was founded by Ital­ian-Ger­man en­tre­pre­neur Max­i­m­il­ian Bel­trame.

Renzo Rosso al­ready has a per­sonal in­vest­ment in Mi­ami with the Pel­i­can Ho­tel, an Art Deco build­ing con­structed in 1939, which the en­tre­pre­neur re­stored and opened in 1994 on the city’s South Beach strip. The ho­tel is be­ing ren­o­vated.

Dubbed “The Most Ex­pen­sive T-shirts Ever,” each top shows a photo of one of the 143 apart­ments and comes with that lo­ca­tion’s price tag.