There’s a certain clarity that comes with experience, and in our conversation with Piero Turk, that clarity shows up in almost every answer. Having spent decades in the industry, from the early days of Italian denim alongside Adriano Goldschmied to today’s globalized landscape, Piero doesn’t romanticize the past, but he does understand exactly what’s been lost along the way.
What stands out first is how he entered the business. Not through design school or a defined career path, but almost by accident, leaving medicine behind and stepping into a world where, at the time, everyone did everything. It’s a version of the industry that feels almost impossible today. As he puts it, even if you had a title, “you had to do everything… driving a van, going to the laundries, picking up fabrics.” That kind of immersion wasn’t just chaotic, it was formative. It created a generation that understood denim from fiber to finished garment.
That foundation ties directly into something Piero returns to throughout the conversation: taste. Not skill, not access, but taste. He describes it in a simple way, walking through his village and absorbing what’s around him, from store windows to everyday style. It’s something that can’t be replicated through manuals or machinery. Production, he explains, can now happen almost anywhere at a high level, but understanding whether something is good, whether it feels right, is another matter entirely. “They can reproduce a formula,” he says, “but they don’t understand if it’s nice or not.”
…without emotion, “you have just a piece of clothes.”
From there, the conversation naturally shifts to globalization, and Piero doesn’t soften his view. Lower costs didn’t just change where denim is made, they changed what it is. Compromises became part of the system, not the exception. “You don’t pay the workers,” he says plainly, “but also you have to accept compromises in the quality of the product.” It’s a reminder that price and product are always connected, no matter how much the industry tries to separate them.
Where things become more pointed is around profit. Not profit itself, Piero is clear that it’s necessary, but the way it’s pursued today. “The profit is the oil that fuels the engine,” he says, “but when it’s too much, it’s too much… it’s killing the poetry.” That word, poetry, comes up more than once, and it’s telling. Because what he’s really describing is the loss of care, of intention, of the emotional side of making something. When everything is reduced to margins and spreadsheets, the product inevitably follows.
That same thinking carries into his views on sustainability, where he’s equally direct. For Piero, it’s not about percentages or materials, it’s about the full picture. “How can it be sustainable if your workers are starving?” It’s a line that cuts through a lot of the current conversation and reframes what sustainability should actually mean.
And then there’s design, or more specifically, the idea of originality. In an industry obsessed with newness, Piero offers a more grounded perspective, one that feels both honest and, in a way, reassuring.
“You couldn’t have Michelangelo if he was alone in a dark room”
“He was talking and sharing ideas with other artists.” In other words, influence, reference, even copying in some form, it’s always been part of the process. The difference is what you do with it.
What we’re left with after this conversation isn’t a sense that things were better before, but a clearer understanding of what made them meaningful. Knowledge, proximity, collaboration, and above all, a genuine connection to the product. Or as Piero puts it more simply, without emotion, “you have just a piece of clothes.”
The full conversation with Piero Turk is available on the Jeansland podcast, where we go deeper into denim, profit, and everything in between.
