MILAN, ITALY — Fun, on duty? Well, let’s start with the orgasms. Showing in an industrial show-space—an atmospheric, sultry bespoke club charged with provocation and sheer excitement—Glenn Martens’ Spring/ Summer 2027 (and final) outing for Diesel was an exercise in disruption. It began by unleashing a lineup of unabashed characters from (LA)HORDE, the Marseille-hailed art collective that made the case for democratising fun and sensuous tension in all their untamed glory.
The two hundred performers, in fact, turned up the heat through unsettling actions like smooching, snuggling and entwining their bodies amid one another, and its audience, us. Needless to say, things got pretty wild and hot. But let’s move on to the garments before this reporter (ahem, myself) loses sight and direction of his story.
Confined to an exquisite gamut of earthy browns, blues, greys and tobacco, Martens made his message of continuity by revisiting his trademark pieces. Standouts comprised proposals such as waxed leather jackets worn over topstitched blazers, ribbed knit sweaters that merged with tracksuit collars and shirtsleeve cuffs, while merged pieces run throughout the collection and join between garments defined by cutaways of orchids. Merging also leads to the pantasock in leather and denim.
Layering and volume also ruled supreme: over-the-knee skirts, demure from the front, are dramatically cut away for a party in the back. Denim pieces are coated then laser-cut for a leather effect, while trompe-l’œil prints bring a wintry feel to Spring, like motifs of tweed coats and textured jackets on breezy button-ups.
“I think every season we try to do something unexpected, but this one was a bit more experimental,” Martens told reporters backstage post-show. “We always talk about fun and having fun, and sex is always quite together, so I think the whole celebration of being body positive, loving each other, is part of that DNA,” he reflects. “And of course also the collection is very much based on that, because a lot of the garments are draped around the body, they’re like t-shirts or whatever, draped within underwear, so you can’t really wear them as t-shirts.” It’s the idea of a walk of shame.
“You know when after a heavy night, you get out of that strange hotel room from somebody you don’t remember so much, and you just quickly put everything on, and you still feel glorious? I think that’s a bit where we wanted to go,” says Martens. Again, very fun.
“There were a lot of trompe l’oeil effects, and it’s like a bit of a beginning story. In the very first show I had a lot of trompe-l’oeil, and this season there were a lot of really quite famous fall-winter garments, most even from my first collections, that I put on windbreakers. To be very honest, because the production of garments thirty years ago was way cheaper, now all the topstitches are so expensive, and Renzo kept on asking for more stitches and patches.”
Martens’ keynote for SS27? A “fanatic” homage to fashion. “It’s about loving and respecting and enjoying life at its best, and I think we never pretended to be a luxury brand, even though we have a show in Milan Fashion Week,” concludes Martens. “I think we always wanted to do alternative things, and think about the community, and about the people, and I think that’s what I try to celebrate, but also with respect to clothes by making sure also the clothes are interesting, and have something nice to say. I hope you were interested in us.”
by Chidozie Obasi