Diesel (Q2925)
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Diesel is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Diesel |
Diesel is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
designer
creative director
designer
2020
artistic director
store-front work
designer
founder
“Everything is great, thanks for asking,” it said on the t-shirt in look 23. Glenn Martens seemed great too, despite falling behind his schedule thanks to a late arrival from Paris to Milan en route to this Diesel pre-fall 2025 appointment. It was to see a pre-chapter in which he focused on extending the last collection’s runway themes, on broadening the availability of lower-price point iterations of his Diesel design, and on expanding the house’s dizzying denim universe.Much of the collection was cut in denim with new characteristics (such as the ‘fluid denim’ in the tailoring and long drapey skirts), or in other fabrics that semi-identified as denim (such as the ‘technical denim’ windbreakers made of waterproof material with a denim treatment). “Sometimes I don’t know whether it’s denim or not!” joked Martens. With such an array of either denim-identifying or denim-cosplaying pieces in his studio (and soon the Diesel shop-floor), that would be understandable: jersey t-shirts and strappy crop tops were in jersey treated to resemble denim, whereas some of the knits were assembled from real denim yarn. A new jeans style (in look 24) was cut with a slim, fitted waist and a wide, roomy leg: only partially for the sake of denim disambiguation, it was called the D-ENIM-M.Ultimately, what maybe matters most to Diesel and Martens is the authenticity of the emotions that denim encapsulates as well as the values it signifies. These run from, but also beyond, denim. The mirrored cone set for this shoot allowed the models to throw crazy shapes to create a kaleidoscopic vortex of their own reflections. Block print graphics in which were blended art nouveau, pop art, and florals were placed over top-to-toe silkily fluid womenswear looks, linen separates, and waffle-jersey hoodies. Negative images of those prints were placed over sportswear shirting worn above faux-leather skirting, as well as a v-neck indigo and white striped jersey knit. There were some cool menswear mustardy jumbo cord pieces inspired by ’90s snowboarding. A hero cut biker first introduced by Martens during his earliest phase at Diesel was reintroduced in mixed color denim and faux-leather. “People kept asking and asking for it,” he said.The tailoring in this collection was pitched towards an older vintage of the brand’s fans, while the closing group of all-over animal prints was consciously conceived—and printed—to hit Gen Z’s receptors.
Responding to the people that respond to Diesel is central to its current success under Martens.
21 November 2024
“Diesel is denim.” So droned the AI voice that had already read and re-read the Wikipedia entry on denim before this show started. We contemplated an arresting and scary ocean of denim scraps and off-cuts that had been brought in from Diesel facilities then spread across the floor of the cavernous out-of-town hangar in which the show was held again this season. As well as looking so unsettlingly striking, this gesture was meant to emphasize how under the design direction of Glenn Martens and the direction of the Rosso clan this brand has pivoted from using three percent to 57 percent regenerative, organic, or recycled cotton in the manufacture of its core material. Considering the scale of Diesel’s business, that is a significant achievement.Diesel’s reinvention of denim applies to product as well as process. Chatting before the show, Martens mooted that around 80 per cent of this collection’s looks contained it. At the beginning, this was mostly self-evident: distressed and tufted hot pants, washed five-pocket classics with pressed creases, spaghetti-strap dresses, skirts and denim-jersey separates with shaggily horizontal loose weave sections. Then it became harder to parse. The tailored pieces and dresses in prince of wales check were, it turns out, printed denim—there to show how a garment with a refined and precious facade could be rendered as robustly tough as workwear.Without having had the chance to check, I’d wager that the next section’s starring garments—the outerwear and dresses edged with enormous reefs of fringing at the collar and neckline—were denim-free (and I’d probably lose). Denim or not, their banks of sliced tendrils loosely tied as both decoration and support made their wearers attractively appear as if they’d narrowly escaped a close call with an office shredder.Accessories included wraparound shades whose frames were in production roughed up to be all individually different in detail and patina, and a new handbag whose name, the Double D, honored the Diesel branding tradition and was broadcast buxomly in its shape. There was denim boucle, denim jacquard, and a Neo from TheMatrixstyle monkish gown in embossed (not treated) indigo denim before a closing section of tied and wrapped jersey garments printed with vintage Diesel scarves that shifted the pattern a little. “We’ve been doing a lot of different things here over the last few seasons, so I think this was the moment to remind everyone about our denim again,” said Martens.
He certainly achieved his aim.
21 September 2024
With year-on-year sales up 13% in 2023, Diesel under Glenn Martens—and the OTB Group more broadly—is proving itself a winner in these most divisive of times for the industry. What’s exceptional about Diesel is that rather than hustling for space at the apogee of price point and craft (where most of the other winners are), it expresses itself as a democratic alternative to conventional luxury defined less by altitude and more by attitude.This pre-spring collection continued the Martens formula. In between dropping some satisfyingly scurrilous nuggets of gossip—“but please save that one for your book!”—he toured a collection that handily spanned the streets to the steps of The Met. As ever, the core of the collection was built around denim. Here black denim was tailored, dyed, and coated to create an effectively ironic post-executive power wardrobe. A successful two-year-old line of denim-effect underwear was reconfigured as denim-effect-underwear outerwear. Said Martens: “It’s really blurring the archetypes and the typology of items and also blurring what is underlayer or outer layer.” More blurring occurred in matte metallic miniskirts split by zippers that allowed you to repurpose them as wearable luggage. Roughly cut oversized pieces in denim bouclé knowingly contrasted the raw and the cooked. The Big D motif was reexpressed as a cutout embroidery placed against the left pec on pieces that might leave you with a Diesel-branded sunburn.A new version of the cute scrunched handbag shown during last season’s mass-video-conference runway came in patent. There was a fresh array of generically satirical sneakers whose retail prices, Martens said, are being consciously reduced—another differentiator between Diesel and the rest—in order to widen their attainability. True to Martens’s core aesthetic, the collection was sophisticatedly rent and bent in order to generate an aura of absolutely zero shits given.
29 May 2024
“One nice thing about this concept is that it breaks the ‘holiness’ from the show. There’s always that thing where you can’t see anything until it’s on the runway.” So said Glenn Martens during a preview of this collection that—asVogue Business(go read it) comprehensively reported earlier today—was really kind of a post-view: This was because the final preparations for this morning’s show had been streamed nonstop from Diesel’s Via Stendhal HQ for the last four days.Demystifying the fashion show is completely consistent with Martens’s increasingly assured captaincy of Diesel. “We are always trying to be alternative in the industry. We belong in Fashion Week, but we are not a classic luxury brand; we are all about lifestyles. And we are about our communities and our friends and our families—so let’s try and bring them in.”This was why when Martens’s impressive wax-matted braid knitwear pieces were walked in front of me I found myself borderline ignoring them. Instead I was watching a beautifully-snouted long-haired hound—I wouldn’t like to unintentionally misbreed, but he/she appeared Afghan—who stared forth from just one cell on of the six enormous 100-cell Zoom call screens that were placed extremely close to the IRL audience. Other Zoomers who had registered to participate thus in the show included someone in an alien suit who was suspiciously on-brand in a big-D Diesel hat, someone whose monumental embonpoint filled their screen, and another regrettably less-focused dog. A few looks near the end, including the tank top worn by model Dieselboy (yes, really), were printed with more Zoom screens to add an extra-meta twist to this postmodern hall of mirrors matrix.The clothes were as crazily layered, intensely worked and repeatedly stimulated as Diesel’s core audience. As transparent as his acid-washed sweat-stain jerseys, or gauze clad “cauliflower” puffer jackets, Martens had in the preview cheerily called my attention to Faustine Steinmetz, who has acted as freelance designer for all Diesel artisanal pieces for the last four seasons. Really impressive were the synthetic hair edged destroyed argyles, and the tufted knits in layers of patched color designed to resemble friction-worn vintage pieces. A similar intention was behind the mixed-length faux furs. Denim, knit, and jersey were all burned and then subjected to willfully anarchic forms of reconstruction surgery to create beautiful mixed-up Frankensteins: paragons of purposefully imperfect luxury.
After Martens came out, the Zoom screens rippled with goodbye wave icons and the cells of Diesel’s alternative front row goers blinked off. That rapt fashion dog was one of the last to end the call. Diesel recently reported a significant uplift in revenues for 2023, and little wonder: As well as his design chops, Martens’s instinct for brand image optimization is off the hook.
21 February 2024
This appointment with Glenn Martens in Diesel’s Milan HQ was his third collection presentation in six weeks. His endlessly intense working practice—back and forth between the big D and Y/Project—increasingly seems ingrained in the layered aesthetic that is its result. At Diesel the raw commodity that informs everything is denim. And while the brand presents a comprehensive offer of conventional blue jean pieces, in Martens’s hands the material is also infinitely moldable into more counter-intuitively cool pieces.The techniques he uses are multiple, but in this collection they invariably involve some form of layering. A skirt was physically grafted over a pair of jeans, and a jacket conjoined with a skirt. A sort of technical Canadian tuxedo effect was created by layering bonded denim over unbonded. Denim was layered and then “baked” in a treatment that lent it a leathery look. Sometimes jersey was cut into denim pieces, or denim was cut into leather pieces. A series of non-denim archetype garments—windbreaker, dadcore fleece, puffer, trenchcoat, blazer—were brought into the denim fold. Only underwear definitely wasn’t denim, although it was denim-effect.Some of the showpieces from September returned as editions of themselves, scanned as prints onto higher-distribution, lower cost wearable Diesel media. Martens said that these pieces—a literal layering of one collection into another—were amongst his favorites of this season. Layered knits, double-layered then distressed jerseys, layered poster prints, bouclé-effect recycled polyester base layers, and shinily bonded wool in tailoring were a few detours in materiality that added to the impact of this denim-rich but never monotonous Martens ensemble.
1 December 2023
Corporate slogans are usually empty rhetoric. So bravo to Diesel—“Only The Brave”—for showing serious courage by throwing its show in the middle of a free outdoor rave for 7,000 people—just at the very moment Milan’s skies were due to open.Glenn Martens’s gamble seemed to have gone south when the forecast proved right. As the first models came out in his artisanal-industrial shredded and devoré denim outfits, the rain started to slice with gusto through the spotlit area above the 150-foot runway that stretched long into the huge crowd. Happily that crowd, which had been enjoying an NTS-programmed DJ line-up for nearly four hours already, barely flinched: from the bleachers at the back to the sea of phone-wielders under the big screen runway backdrop, they stayed to dance to Senjan Jansen’s uncompromising soundtrack and check out Marten’s designs.Martens mentioned that the free tickets that had been made available online—first to 1,500 students from Milan’s universities, then to all comers—had been snapped up in minutes. After tonight’s fiesta (which, crucially, was liberally supplied with free gin courtesy of Bulldog), the huge old Scalo Farini rail yard space (where Alessandro Michele used to show Gucci) will remain open to all for several days to show films includingMulholland Drive, Fight Club, Spirited Away and Wall-Ein a five-movie-a-day free screening marathon.“It’s about togetherness,” said Martens. “It’s about bringing people together for an analogue moment.” Despite those analogue ambitions, and the handsome Yashica disposable film camera that acted as an invitation, the Diesel team must have felt gratified to see the sea of glowing cameras raised towards the runway as the models walked through the rain.The movie program was the cue for looks that incorporated schlockily fun, Dieselized parodies of old-school movie posters for titles includingSpice WorldandBatmanon some of the garments. These were distressed, acid-washed and double layered, printed on opaque cottony fabric above jersey. Close fitting ruched jersey or lurex dresses, some of them traced with the external outline of underwear, acted as loose human pastiche of the Oscars statuette. Destroyed tuxedos, half red carpet and half apocalypse, were the masculine counterpoint.A series of looks for men and women were built of shredded jersey layered over sheer fabric to create a peeling paint effect.
Last season’s denim layered under polyester section was developed to add a velvet finish, sometimes printed with florals or camouflage. What appeared to be hyper-tactical pants were in fact collaged fanny packs draped down each leg, worn with undershorts. Artisanal pieces included dresses handmade in shredded denim or burned mesh. Several models were caked in grayish ochre mud—good for the complexion—that matched the tone of their looks. Despite the rain this remained firmly in place. Amusing accessories included big-D bike-helmet baseball caps.As the last model walked, statuette-esque in a flowing black silk skirt and bralette/scarf combo, the rain suddenly cleared. The finale—and then four more hours of partying—followed. This was a brave show that paid off handsomely.
20 September 2023
“We are continually evolving, it is about continuity,” said Glenn Martens at the beginning of our chat. He added: “Perhaps more than anything I can say that what we did better this time was to take more carryover stories from therunwayand industrialize them to create easier access price points for all of our stores and customers.” Another evolution, he said, was that his ambition to present Diesel collections as fluid, every-gender products on the shop floors has begun to manifest in certain flagship outlets—and that this lookbook was shot to reflect that.In other words, if February’s Durex-strewn Diesel show emphasized sex, then this follow-up collection was concerned with performance. The last-show iterations of Martens’ three Diesel pillars—denim, utility, and pop—were all democratically diffused. Denim-wise, we saw the core material cut into jersey, leather, or bouclé panels on tough sportswear, trimmed with lace in easy-wearing little dresses, overlaid with oily or stonewashed color treatments, and used as a fabric for shoe uppers. The mainline collection’s intricate indigo dyed denim knits were reformulated in a fabrication designed to be color-fast as well as eye-catching.The Diesel D was everywhere—“because everybody wants the D”—and the full house name was elsewhere formed from grungy intarsia. Utility pieces included extravagantly pocketed “banana” leg pants. A hazy color camouflage featured on hoodies, cargo pants, and other key garments in the contemporary casual uniform. Martens’s peeled-apart runway garments, flayed by fire, were less dangerously echoed in precisely sliced knits layered with jersey.The designer emphasized that his foundational pivot to sustainability continues: “around 70% of all the denim here is produced through more sustainable processes,” he said. Elsewhere collegiate lettering on jerseys amusingly declared “Lies,” but this designer’s determination to green Diesel is no fib. He said: “Another thing is that from this season, forever and ever, our swimwear will be made from 100% recycled polyester.”
10 May 2023
Ecstatic moaning on the soundtrack and 200,000 boxes of Durex condoms on the runway both suggested Glenn Martens had one thing on his mind: market penetration. During a preview the designer foreplayed that in April Diesel would be handing out half a million free company-branded Durex prophylactics in its stores around the world (where legal). There was a Big-D x Durex logo capsule collection too.“Successful living is about being sex-positive, having fun, enjoying life, and also being respectful and safe,” said Martens pre-show. “Plus we are a very cheeky, straightforward brand.” Also cheeky were the first look’s low-low rise jeans—bumsters redux—whose moto styling accelerated us into this collection. As is de rigueur at this house, denim innovation was front and center. Devoré denim saw patches of jeans, skirts, and jackets—sometimes bolstered with shearling—fade into sheer panels of meshed lace. This luxurified distressed jean motif was then ingeniously echoed in the patterning of crystal-etched dresses and in the overprinted pale fade patterns on tailored workwear-shape gray pinstripe pieces.This phase merged into a sort ofMad Maxx Y2K sequence of nomadically shaped knitwear that had been finely plucked by laser into attractively wild, apparent disrepair. Two cleverly tufted knitwear pieces—one pink on black, the other gray on black—were there to reflect Marten’s stylistic penchant for grown-out hair dye. Painted and over-layered utility wear in a subtly wild paint-splash camo contrasted with double layered jersey pieces from which the outer sometimes was peeled back to reveal the inner. Dresses in slight swatches or ripped strips of silk hung faux-precariously from fine chain fittings. Digitally distorted pictures of over-toothed smiles were used as close up prints on a particularly successful phase of near-climax fits.The wildest pieces of all were from the hand-fashioned artisanal section; these included a long jacket of layered lining and a moto jacket that referred back to the opener artistically melted and then layered with another skin—accidentally vaguely condom-like in consistency—of membrane. Martens said rightly that he believes his Diesel design language is becoming ever more distinctly identifiable. “It’s all about not being scared and not going backwards,” he said. Company founder Renzo Rosso, the one who swiped right on the decision to ask Martens to reform Diesel from top to bottom, looked satisfied too.
22 February 2023
Ruminating over a caesar salad, Glenn Martens described this Diesel collection as “for everyone.” He continued, “Because Diesel is not a luxury brand, and this is important to remember. This means that our pre-collections—unlike say Louis Vuitton or Balanciaga who speak in ‘pre’ to the same customer as [the] main line—are for a different audience than our shows, although there is some overlap. Our shows are more for people in the fashion industry, while with our pre-collections we try to speak to everyone; my brother, my mother, teenagers in high schools… everyone. So it is a very different exercise for me.”Assembling such a broad, yet aesthetically-distinct offer, certainly requires Martens to exercise different creative muscles than those he uses for Diesel main line or Y/Project. In order to conjure this more commercial offer he considered a constellation of personalities who share the same characteristic: “it’s this breaking boundaries, no bullshit attitude. Sexy and fun.”Denim, both from the permanent Library selection and in seasonal styles, remains the material manifestation of Diesel’s core irreverent spirit. Here it was manipulated and replicated in multiple manners to create shoes and underwear (apparently super-popular), woven into jersey—a sort of Diesel boucle—to create boobtubes and sportswear separates. There were zippered denim dresses, leg-seamed long denim skirts, and of course jeans and jackets aplenty. These sometimes came with the Diesel D-logo (embroidered over the posterior) that Martens enjoys making as ubiquitous as possible; other appearances included as a buckle on his belt-skirt hybrids, in the hardware of a Charm handbag whose chains could be used as necklace, and at the chest of metallic lamé space-girl vests.Other phases included a black-focused group whose aesthetic ran from utilitarian-grunge, oversized, to post-streetwear tailoring. There were cleverly double-layered shirts whose distressed exteriors revealed the inner layer (descendants from the last mainline collection). A map of the world was blown up and distorted to create an abstract camouflage, emphasizing this company’s global ambitions. Accessories are key to meeting these, and for this collection Martens introduced a new line of sunglasses created with Luxottica as well as new versions of the emphatically soled Prototype sneaker. The acid-toned floral pieces at the end in ongoing house profiles were, as their designer intended, both sexy and fun.
21 November 2022
Diesel’s Glenn Martens claimed pre-show that the four inflatable human figures that straddled both each other and the middle of the monumental runway had been certified by Guinness World Records as the largest ever recorded. That wasn’t all that was notable about them: It was difficult to get an overview, but from my angle they appeared erotically intertwined. That Martens’s invitation came for the second season in a row accompanied by a sex toy—this time a handsome glass butt plug—further stimulated suspicion that this was their position.For each guest there was also a free “commemorative” NFT: Web3 is so hot right now. Fashion takes a village, so Martens invited half the city. About 3,000 people had bagged their free tickets online, while a further 1,600 were reserved for students. Most of the 200-ish remaining were there to work or influence. The exceptions were Gucci’s Marco Bizzarri and Moncler’s Remo Ruffini, who were there to support Renzo Rosso and Martens. Other guests included Lil Dre, Julia Fox, Bianca Balti, Skepta, Lolo Zouaï, Mahmood, and Normani.Under Rosso (in a different manner to the blow-up figures), Martens has been charged with revitalizing and democratizing Diesel. Fittingly enough, this is partially driven by Rosso’s ambition to take his company public. Whatever the motivation, this morning’s stadium show—70 percent of whose attendees were under age 26—was powerful evidence of Diesel’s new audience. All of the publicly available tickets were snapped up within 90 minutes of being released.Martens said the collection was divided into four chapters: denim, utilitywear, “pop,” and “extravaganza.” He added: “This is my recipe for Diesel; the four ingredients that I insist upon. Because this is only my second show here, and I think we need to keep showing it.” He said one overlying characteristic of the collection was distress: “All of the pieces are ‘imperfect’ through treatment and design. This is something I like, but it also goes back to that democratic instinct. We know Diesel is a brand for anyone who wants to relate, whoever they are, however they feel; everyone is individual and no two people are the same. Plus the piece is supposed to look ‘broken’ so that you can live with it forever—it is unbreakable.”Diesel’s denim expertise was on full display today. It came layered in tulle, interwoven with lace and organza, or spliced into corsetry.
The washes and treatments were manifold: Encrusted with croc-print overlays, reverse-sun-faded, garment-dyed into multiple colors. There was denim jersey and knit denim and flocked denim and fringed denim. And then there was the odd piece of bread-and-butter denim, including a pair of straight-leg jeans and a pair of shorts, both featuring the retro-future DieselDlogo as a cheeky window just above the fly.Utilitywear included a two-tone olive bomber-and-pants menswear look and a long washed cargo dress, plus a series of nomadically postindustrial ragtag jersey ensembles—streetwear for the postapocalypse.Pop delivered acid-toned racer-back or spaghetti-strap minidresses sometimes garlanded with florals and contrast-colored lace. A zippered trench dress in a shinily finished tangerine material worked nicely against a same-shade but frayed menswear look in denim. There was a hilarious black leather moto ensemble that seemed like it had previously been made to fit two wearers at once—back to those conjoined figures—before the second wearer had cut himself free to escape. Martens’s Velcro-fastened strap miniskirt returned in silver, as risky as before.A frayed logo jersey tank top and boob tube—both logo-printed and worn over some trompe l’oeil double-bonded denim pieces in black—signaled the extravaganza. This included two exploded bouclé coats made from torn and tufted Diesel-print fabric and a final, triumphantly tattered house-logo-print skirt south of a trucker. Thousands of phones were held aloft at the finale as Martens’s models retreaded their route through the flailing limbs above them.
21 September 2022
From sustainability to Julia Fox, Glenn Martens’s first 18 months at Diesel have been dedicated to aligning the 1978-founded denim disruptor with both the deeper values and shallower preoccupations of now. In this pre-spring collection he continued that mission through a further two-pronged emphasis on the serious and the superficial, with both sides of that binary expressed via Martens’s expertly twisted aesthetic.The serious bedrock continues to be in expanding the sustainable operations of this hybrid house. A reconfigured, jersey-specific core line named Diesel Essentials will from this collection forward be made from all-organic cotton, trimmed in recycled materials, and finished with “low impact” treatments and prints. Prime examples here included a fluoro trio of ruched asymmetrical skirts worn under a hoodie, tee, and turtle. On the side, Martens expanded the recently-launched Diesel Rehab Denim capsule—made from denim off-cuts, recycled cotton, and recycled elastane—into pieces including the season’s decadently pocketed utility pants and padded jackets. He added that a for-now exclusively Italian pilot scheme to buy-back and repurpose vintage Diesel through resale or upcycling is showing promising results.This responsible practice lends Martens’s Diesel ample clear-of-conscience wiggle room to play around with the brand’s ethos, which he said is: “to have fun, enjoy life, and be successful in every situation that you are in.” Highlights for sybarites included trompe-l’oeil bumsterish cut jeans for women and men, those ornamentally utilitarian pieces, acres of (sustainable) distressed and sometimes-waterproofed denim, retro-futuristic and logo-heavy clingy metallic knit dresses, gothically scripted skintight motowear, and a surprising diversion into tailoring. “It’s not real tailoring—there’s no camel hair,” said Martens of the jackets, coats, and pants that play blue denim against a charcoal wool-mix. But I like the minimalism of it, plus the first drop of this collection is timed for Christmas.” With Martens at the helm, Diesel has in short order pretty much defined its new manifesto of sustainable semi-seditious sexiness.
6 June 2022
Anyone who checked out Glenn Martens’s personal Instagram the day before his Diesel show (last year Martens was made creative director of the Italian jeans brand that has pretty much ripped up the denim rule book since forever) would have seen he had posted a video of a pulsating red object in the Milanese night sky. Given everything that’s going on these days, I doubt many of us would blink an eye at a visit from extraterrestrials—heck, we might even welcome them with open arms. Except, that was no UFO, but the Diesel logo rendered special effect style, flickering and burning up the evening, a moment of imagination in an otherwise humdrum world, with cars zipping back and forth on the highway under this eerie spectral form.That gets us to the perfect—well, kind of—segue way to what Martens (who still creatively directs Y/Project to much and rightful fanfare) has been charged with doing at Diesel, which is: Make something magical and fantastic out of that most democratic and utilitarian of fabrications, AKA denim, for the everyday world. On the strength of the two collections he has done thus far, he has achieved it, and how. Yet with this fall 2022 collection we’re getting the real measure of Martens’s big ambitions for the brand.Big, quite literally: Those enormous, floor-sweeping denim ‘fur’ coats of his were made by the company’s artisans at a level of technique you’d usually find in a couture house, just one of the wildly experimental forays he made here which looked terrific. The upcycled layered bonding then distressing of deadstock Diesel T-shirt jersey into fraying and fragmenting long skirts and supersized pants was also noteworthy. “We want to make more handcrafted pieces and make them locally, out of whatever we have at the factory,” Martens said.Entering the showspace for his Diesel runway debut in a vast industrial lot on the southern outskirts of Milan, it became apparent that his sense of spectacle didn’t stop with the UFO; enormous inflatable figures dwarfed the red runway—think Allen Jones paying a blow-up homage to ‘Dirrty’ Christina Aguilera. She is but one of the ’00s MTV legends who towered over this collection. Just check out everything from the opening look, a teeny denim bra top with a pair of distressed and peeling (a recurrent technique here) faded jeans, to the tongue in cheek belt skirts, the trompe l’oeil catsuits, motocross velvet minis, and be-logoed stiletto boots.
Those suggest a certain demographic of the population might be ready to ironically try out the kind of spike heels we haven’t seen for eons.
23 February 2022
Despite his Belgian-bred credentials of radical cool and experimental prowess, Diesel’s Glenn Martens seems to find the business side of fashion just as compelling. During a showroom appointment at the label’s sprawling HQ, he talked turnovers, sales, and revenues with a touch of irony, as if he himself didn’t quite believe he was so proficient at discussing figures.Catapulted in a sort of culture warp from the Paris studio where he creates the hyper-influential label Y/Project to the provincial shores of Breganze, Italy, the realm of Renzo Rosso’s Only the Brave, Martens is in the eye of a creative tornado. He seems rather busy juggling collections and multiple Diesel projects cooked up by Rosso and his kinetic team. A haute collaboration with Jean Paul Gaultier Couture, due out in January, is the cherry on the fashion cake; it will seal his status as a sought-after star in the industry’s revolving door of creative directors.In his brief tenure at Diesel, Martens has already made his mark, spearheading a couple substantial projects that reveal his affinity for OTB’s move-fast ethos. The one he seems most proud of is the Diesel Library, a repertoire of denim essentials redesigned with a progressive genderless approach and provided with a sustainable pedigree. It’s certainly a big undertaking. “We basically revisited the production chain,” explained Martens. “We achieved amazing results in such a short time, but Renzo isn’t afraid of anything; he just did it. Probably at other companies it would have taken eons to do.”The range of responsible practices put in place is prodigious, and it starts with using low-impact materials. Organic and recycled fabrics are treated with techniques that significantly reduce the use of chemicals and water waste; leather is chrome-free; buttons aren’t galvanized; and tags and cellulosic trims are made with recycled fabrics and Forest Stewardship Council–certified materials. It’s also an educational project, as the Diesel audience can learn how each garment is produced through the company’s QR-coded digital passport.As complex and challenging as building the Diesel Library was, Martens’s definition of pre-fall was, as he put it, “straightforward.
” While keeping the offering real and appealing to the Diesel following, he worked his intriguing magic on that straightforwardness, twisting puffers into enormous specimens printed with hallucinogenic kaleidoscope twirls and coating dusters and side-zipper denim pants with a scratched patina of destroyed metallic shine. Camouflage was given a sexy turn in tiny, tight-fitting, asymmetrical dresses in stretchy chiffon, and branding was explored extensively, attacked (his word) with a raw attitude and experimental finesse.Breaking his reluctance to dig deeper into the collection’s rationale, he said that every garment holds a contrasting dynamic: “One orientation is very military and distressed, the other is very pop and futuristic. There are lots of eclectic, fun moments in the look book, as I really wanted the models to look like CD covers from the 2000s, so we shot the images with a ring light that isn’t fashionable anymore. They’re like pop stars ready to rock the night, to celebrate and party.” As much as he seems to be enjoying the ride, you could tell that he cannot wait to get back to the clubs.
16 December 2021
“It’s DIY and kind of psychedelic and crazy—definitely not your classic runway.” So said Glenn Martens on set last Friday morning, six hours after wrapping the filming and look book shoot of his first above-the-line Diesel collection. After spending several days averaging nine miles dashing here and there during production, and then a half-night of briefly snatched, Negroni-warped sleep, he could most definitely relate to the dream-stateRun Lola Runprogress of this film’s flame-haired heroine, who wore jeans (of course) and a slit white tank top insinuated into the denim via a belt loop at the back. The film saw her transition through four distinct stages: after-party, woozy commute, office arrival, and finally a trippy touchdown on Mars. It was a trip, for sure—was it also just a dream?Back on planet Milan, Martens inhaled deep gulps of espresso as he laid out some of the thinking behind this rapidly presented collection that represents a significant punctuation mark in the history of the brand. As already laid out in ourpreview interview, the Bruges-born Belgian designer has landed at the historically irreverent Italian denim label set on a mission of transformation that is both social and environmental.In the collection’s first section all of the denim cuts were taken from Martens’s newly established Denim Library, an evergreen fully sustainable offer that will in future represent 40%, at least, of the company’s jeans offer. “Although,” he noted with admirable transparency, “not all of the pieces in the film and collection are sustainable, as they have been treated with special coatings.” This opening section featured riffs on what Martens called “the clichés of denim”: high-waisted five-pocket pants with integrated shoes and big denim knickers (both tangibly Y/Project-y), as well as bleached patterned pieces and trompe l’oeil prints.Once out on the street, running, our protagonist led us into a more experimental denim vista, featuring overdyed, smocked full looks of regal outerwear and Giro d’Italia kinky athleisure. A men’s look featured a bonded recycled paper pressed over undyed denim coat and pant, padded denim of a classical Parisian persuasion, and organza dresses and skirts draped to hang (just like Lola’s look and most of the forwardly feminine pieces here) from the hip.Once promoted to the office elevator—a fresh morning hell after the night before—the looks became more ironically formalized.
There was a lot of ingenious process behind the bulbous, flexible pieces in upcycled denim and jersey subtly overprinted with historical Diesel graphics and a paint-like finish. Black leather track-stripe pants and trucker jackets and silkily satin workwear in dusty pink and baby blue represented attractively radical employment attire. There was a great “utility skirt,” basically one very long and pocketed bandolier, that could be worn either as a mini or dangled out the window to use as an escape ladder from the office.As more and more of her colleagues filled the elevator, our heroine stood close to the exit and exuded higher and higher levels of chased anxiety—was she headed to human resources? When the door opened, it was upon a territory even more inhuman: a fake Mars-landing stage set populated by Martens’s most joyfully alien looks. Probably the best was the huge upcycled organza overcoat he was too weakened by fatigue to not refuse to wear during our preview. Other winners included NASCAR-bright modernizations of workwear, sort of retro Jetsons uniforms, and a minidress patterned with an apricot Milky Way swirl.Martens is reordering the position of Diesel’s particles in order to evolve it anew. What he found especially cheering during the shoot, he said, is that the models were enthusiastic about the pieces to the extent that they were checking the retail prices and drop dates, in order to be sure to get hold of the gear for themselves. This first Martens Diesel shuffle was both small step and great leap: a futuristic future-proofing full of twistedly alluring and sometimes gorgeously grimy garments with which to reconnect afresh with the originally twisted social denim house.
13 October 2021
“It’s DIY and kind of psychedelic and crazy—definitely not your classic runway.” So said Glenn Martens on set last Friday morning, six hours after wrapping the filming and look book shoot of his first above-the-line Diesel collection. After spending several days averaging nine miles dashing here and there during production, and then a half-night of briefly snatched, Negroni-warped sleep, he could most definitely relate to the dream-stateRun Lola Runprogress of this film’s flame-haired heroine, who wore jeans (of course) and a slit white tank top insinuated into the denim via a belt loop at the back. The film saw her transition through four distinct stages: after-party, woozy commute, office arrival, and finally a trippy touchdown on Mars. It was a trip, for sure—was it also just a dream?Back on planet Milan, Martens inhaled deep gulps of espresso as he laid out some of the thinking behind this rapidly presented collection that represents a significant punctuation mark in the history of the brand. As already laid out in ourpreview interview, the Bruges-born Belgian designer has landed at the historically irreverent Italian denim label set on a mission of transformation that is both social and environmental.In the collection’s first section all of the denim cuts were taken from Martens’s newly established Denim Library, an evergreen fully sustainable offer that will in future represent 40%, at least, of the company’s jeans offer. “Although,” he noted with admirable transparency, “not all of the pieces in the film and collection are sustainable, as they have been treated with special coatings.” This opening section featured riffs on what Martens called “the clichés of denim”: high-waisted five-pocket pants with integrated shoes and big denim knickers (both tangibly Y/Project-y), as well as bleached patterned pieces and trompe l’oeil prints.Once out on the street, running, our protagonist led us into a more experimental denim vista, featuring overdyed, smocked full looks of regal outerwear and Giro d’Italia kinky athleisure. A men’s look featured a bonded recycled paper pressed over undyed denim coat and pant, padded denim of a classical Parisian persuasion, and organza dresses and skirts draped to hang (just like Lola’s look and most of the forwardly feminine pieces here) from the hip.Once promoted to the office elevator—a fresh morning hell after the night before—the looks became more ironically formalized.
There was a lot of ingenious process behind the bulbous, flexible pieces in upcycled denim and jersey subtly overprinted with historical Diesel graphics and a paint-like finish. Black leather track-stripe pants and trucker jackets and silkily satin workwear in dusty pink and baby blue represented attractively radical employment attire. There was a great “utility skirt,” basically one very long and pocketed bandolier, that could be worn either as a mini or dangled out the window to use as an escape ladder from the office.As more and more of her colleagues filled the elevator, our heroine stood close to the exit and exuded higher and higher levels of chased anxiety—was she headed to human resources? When the door opened, it was upon a territory even more inhuman: a fake Mars-landing stage set populated by Martens’s most joyfully alien looks. Probably the best was the huge upcycled organza overcoat he was too weakened by fatigue to not refuse to wear during our preview. Other winners included NASCAR-bright modernizations of workwear, sort of retro Jetsons uniforms, and a minidress patterned with an apricot Milky Way swirl.Martens is reordering the position of Diesel’s particles in order to evolve it anew. What he found especially cheering during the shoot, he said, is that the models were enthusiastic about the pieces to the extent that they were checking the retail prices and drop dates, in order to be sure to get hold of the gear for themselves. This first Martens Diesel shuffle was both small step and great leap: a futuristic future-proofing full of twistedly alluring and sometimes gorgeously grimy garments with which to reconnect afresh with the originally twisted social denim house.
21 June 2021
Thursday marked exactly one year to the day since Nicola Formichetti took over at Diesel, and that was all the excuse Renzo Rosso, who founded the brand thirty-five years ago, needed to throw a party. He flew three hundred people from all over the world to Venice. "My town, the most beautiful place in the world," Rosso enthused. After an Aperol-fueled gondola ride down the Grand Canal, only a churl could disagree with him.But before the party—and theafter-party at the Palazzo Grassi, which saw the hardiest revelers reeling into a gray Venetian dawn this morning—there was a huge fashion show to clarify how far Diesel has come under Formichetti…and where it might be going. The denim, the leather, the military/utility looks have been pillars of the Diesel aesthetic for decades. "But what makes it unique," Formichetti said before the show, "is that it's not street, it's not luxury, it's a hybrid, a new breed of alternative-spirited brand." Which kind of describes Formichetti's own work over the years, first as a stylist for magazines, then as a creative director for the likes of Uniqlo, Mugler, and Lady Gaga.The many facets of Formichetti were all over the Diesel show. "Any crazy idea I come up with, Renzo says, 'You can do better than that,'" the designer said with his insanely infectious giggle. So we saw power pop looks; digital backdrops by longtime collaborator Nick Knight; Brooke Candy on the catwalk; a Tumblr-enabled model casting; clothes customized andglamorizedto individual taste; and an overall feeling ofinclusiveness, which is something the designer has deliberately cultivated with his social media presence. "There's no difference between the digital and physical world for these kids," Formichetti mused. "They're a new species,indigo children. I find them through Tumblr. They're everywhere, but they don't know about each other till I connect them. That's what I am, aconnector."His connections have inevitably led to some social/political subtexts in his work—LGBT models, a Pussy Riot-inspired finale—but that only makes Formichetti a better match for Rosso, who's no stranger to controversy himself. Last night was more than a mutual admiration society, it was a virtual lovefest. "I want to be just like Renzo when I'm older," said Formichetti. And Rosso is going to make it easy for him. "He said he's giving me the keys to the kingdom for thenextthirty-five years," the designer added.
3 April 2014