FilaXFendi, NikexOffWhite, SupremexEVERYTHING – the fashion world has become obsessed with exclusive collaborations. If in the past years, there were 3-4 collab drops a year, now there are 3-4 collab drops a month. Usually, these limited editions launch at street fashion festivals around the world, using their traffic and hype.

When DIESEL was invited to participate at Bread&&Butter Berlin, the hottest street fashion festival in Europe, we wanted to do a collaboration of our own that will have to stand out from all the others not only at the festival, but also to get the world talking.

The moment two fashion brands do a successful collab, they create long queues outside their stores. Because the longer the queues they have, the more people will want to queue.

So if long queues mean successful collaborations, DIESEL just followed the longest queue to find the ultimate collaboration partner in Berlin. That’s how we found Mustafa, from Mustafa’s Gemuese Kebab, cult kebab shop in the heart of Berlin where people line up for hours at any time of the day, every day.

Our target consists mainly of late millennials for whom pages like highsnobiety show first in their feeds. They’re up to date with everything street fashion and they don’t shy away from spending the extra buck on hyped limited editions. At the same time, they’re city dwellers, night adventurers and famous street food joints are a natural part of their culture. Street food is just as important for them culturally as street fashion. And even if they don’t all live in Berlin, Berlin has got enough swag to turn a super local/connaiseur symbol – like a kebab joint - into a desirable icon worldwide.

We started with creating the limited edition collection that combined typical DIESEL prints and patches with Mustafa’s logo. The collection consisted of hoodies, long sleeve shirts, tshirts, caps and two denim cuts. We teased the collab in an ironic video a few days before the festival. At Bread&&Butter, we created two identical kebab kiosks that were selling the collection but had different functionalities. The first worked as a brand booth where people could personalize the items by Mustafa himself, interact with the influencers, get promoted on our social channels. The second was a real kebab shop where people were getting a free genuine Mustafa Kebab for every item bought. The activation lasted 3 days and the collection was available only at B&&B. After the festival, the collection became available globally on Diesel’s e-commerce and zalando.com.

The collection was completely sold out at the festival. In the following week, the rest of the collection was also sold out online. Well, almost – we were left with 7 XXS simple black tshirts. Out of 4000 pieces.

We reached 32,6 million people worldwide in just ONE weekend. Every major fashion publication wrote about the collaboration, like Vogue, WWD, Highsnobiety, Harper’s Bazaar or Dazed, just to name a few, causing diesel e-commerce visits to double. Mustafa and his employees are still wearing the custom made aprons and uniforms in the present day, exposing our message to thousands of customers every day.