Luciano Benetton: Famous fashion to cultural controversy

Luciano Benetton rose from poverty in postwar Italy to found a chain of 7,000 high street fashion stores and create some of the most controversial advertising campaigns in history, becoming a billionaire along the way. Journalist Zing Tsjeng and BBC business editor Simon Jack discover how it all started for Luciano Benetton with a yellow sweater knitted by his sister, on a journey that takes in Benito Mussolini, Dolce Vita, Formula One, and Princess Diana. But Benetton wasn’t just about fashion; with photographer Oliviero Toscani, the entrepreneur launched a series of highly controversial ad campaigns that tackled race, religion, AIDS, and the death penalty, that made the fashion brand infamous. Good Bad Billionaire is the podcast that explores the lives of the super-rich and famous, tracking their wealth, philanthropy, business ethics and success. There are leaders who made their money in Silicon Valley, on Wall Street and in high street fashion. From iconic celebrities and CEOs to titans of technology, the podcast unravels billionaire stories of fortune, power, economics, ambition and moral responsibility to explore how they achieved financial success, before asking the audience to decide if they are good, bad, or just billionaires. Some of the people we've featured previously on Good Bad Billionaire include Tyler Perry, Evan Spiegel, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Henry Ford, LeBron James, Selena Gomez and Martha Stewart. Every episode is available to listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. To contact the team, email [email protected] or send a text or WhatsApp to +1 (917) 686-1176. Find out more about the show and read our privacy notice at www.bbcworldservice.com/goodbadbillionaire