By JOHN TAGLIABUE

　　VEDELAGO, Italy – Giovannie Petrin remembers well his first efforts at beating up jeans.

　　Italian industrialists had vivsted Japan years age to observe how the Japanese washed denim garments with small stones. “So we took white stones from riverbeds here in the Veneto,” said Mr. Petrin, referring to the northern Italian region where his jeans factory is situated. “It destroyed the washing machines, and the jeans.”

　　Only after the Italian learned that the Japanese used pumice did the trick work.

　　Now sales of jeans with the used, worn or beat-up look are booming on both sides of the Atlantic, making battered jeans a case study of the push and pull of global competition. They have fanciful American brand names like Diesel, Replay and Seven for all Mankind, but in fact, the real driving forces behind these names are all Europeans, and now they are asserting their design influence as the premium and elite niche of the jeans market are exploding.

　　At the heart of this phenomenon are the artificially aged garments laboriously engineered by Europeans like Mr. Petrin, the chief executive of Martelli Lavorazioni Tessili.

　　 “The Italians, and in large part Martelli, took it to an art form.” said Joe Ieraci, owner of the Blue Hound, a denim consulting firm, describing Martelli’s techniques for distressing denim.

　　Martelli posted $140 million of revenue in 2005 not by making any of these jeans, but by providing the skills and technology to transform them from new to old-looking. It was largely thanks to those like Mr. Petrin, who helped build the new “old” look by combining fresh styling with innovative manufacturing skills, that weathered jeans became the object of desire in America’s $15 billion jeans market.

　　Martelli has competitors only in the United States and in Japan. Earlier this year, the company, which has four factories in Italy, signed an agreement to build a plant in Morocco with local partners. Last year, the company opened a factory in Turkey. In Romania, Martelli already turns around about 30,000 pairs of jeans a day at its own plant.

　　Today, about two-third of Martelli’s production is at its Italian factories and a third elsewhere. Mr. Petrin says he can see the day coming when the relationship will reverse, and only design and research and development will remain in Italy.

　　The real secret to Martelli’s success? Chinese labor. Most of the 175 workers in one of Martelli’s hand-crafting factories are legal Chinese immigrants whom Mr. Petrin praises for their patience and dexterity.

　　With its 9,000 employees, Martelli takes jeans manufactured in low-wage countries like Morocco or Turkey and then stylizes them for clients like Gucci, Armani or Tommy Hilfiger, who sell the finished product. Mr. Petrin client list includes designers like Armani, Dolce&Gabbana, Yves Saint Laurent, Calvin Klein and Donna Karan, but also mass market brands like Levi Strauss, the world’s biggest jeans maker, the Lee and Wrangler brands of the VP Corporation, Gap and Zara.

　　While the American market for high-end jeans represents only about 3 to 4 percent of the total market, it is growing at 40 to 50 percent annually, according to Mark Massura, a strategic planner at Cotton Incorporated, a trade group. “It’s a small part, but it’s the fastest-growing part of the market,” he said.

　　One threat to jeans bashers like Mr. Petrin is a recent fashion trend toward cleaner jeans. “While I still think that abrasions, washing out and other details are relevant,” said Deirdre Maloney, an owner of Brand Pimps and Media Whores, a fashion consulting firm in New York, by e-mail, “I think holes and rips will be on hiatus from the market for a couple of seasons.”