Summary
Glenn Martens concludes his transformative six-year tenure at Diesel with SS27.
His final SS27 show celebrated this legacy with sensual performance art and an inventive 90-look collection featuring surrealist denim, hybrid garments, and orchid cutouts.
Just days ahead of the SS27 show, it was officially announced that Glenn Martens would conclude his 6-year tenure at Diesel. In true Martens style, the designer made a spectacle of the final runway show, closing a transformative period that injected the Italian denim label with renewed energy and pop cultural relevance.
On September 18, Diesel founder and OTB Chairman Renzo Rosso confirmed the news in an official statement, adding that Martens “brought Diesel back to the centre of the global fashion conversation while preserving the openness, energy and accessibility that have always distinguished us.” “We are deeply grateful for everything he has achieved,” he concluded.
While spectators filled the club-inspired venue, a surprise performance art piece turned heads across the room. Two hundred performers from (LA)HORDE, the Marseille artist collective, engaged in intimate embraces and sensual dances, warming the space for the collection to come. “The party always comes first at Diesel. It’s about inclusivity, self-expression, pleasure and the democracy of experience,” Martens shared in a statement. In his own words, the heavy-hitting collection, close to 90 looks, distilled “the essence of Diesel.” Described by the designer as “disruptive, sexy, fluid, fun,” the collection was packed full of inventive denim treatments, orchid-inspired cutouts, and scrunched and twisted constructions.
As the show opened, hybrid garments were immediately apparent, including the pantasock (combining pants and socks) and a range of rib-knit sweaters that burst open at the neck, revealing shirt and quarter-zip collars. In line with the designer’s affinity for surrealism, some apparently leather pieces, like jeans, jackets, and skirts, were not leather at all but instead denim that had been coated and laser-cut. Elsewhere, trompe l’oeil summer outerwear fooled the eye into seeing winter-weather details like sherpa collars.
Softening the aesthetic of the collection was a recurring floral motif executed in the form of cutaways. While appearing like tattered edges from afar, the orchid-shaped trims brought an organic accent to the lived-in fabrics and streetwear styles. The flower, with its connotation of fertility, also emphasized the designer’s “sexy” vision of the label. On one pair of black leather pants, a bejeweled orchid brooch was fixed right at the center of the crotch for a tongue-in-cheek jewelry moment.
From placing models in glass eggs throughout the city to installing gargantuan inflatable figures and displaying 50,000+ pieces of Diesel ephemera, Martens's Diesel runways will go down in history as some of the brand’s most memorable moments. Though the designer’s final walk marks the end of his creative authority over the brand, “the party” Martens brought to Diesel is poised to leave its mark for years to come.
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