Brut. Maison Margiela AW25 Haute Couture

July 10, 2025 | Design & Culture by Ed

Couture is the most archaic branch of fashion sensu lato, and this time around I really wondered if it shouldn’t be put to sleep – and wake up only when it has something meaningful to say again. Or at least when a prince – a new, revolutionary talent – emerges and gives it a kiss of life.

Glenn Martens certainly isn’t that prince. I’ve never been a number one Y/Project fan, and his Diesel isn’t my cup of tea either. So when the news broke that he’s the new creative director of Maison Margiela, you can imagine I wasn’t overly thrilled. After seeing his debut artisanal collection yesterday, all I thought was: damn, we’ve been really blessed to see John Galliano’s final act over a year ago (and we just didn’t deserve it).

To me, Martin Margiela isn’t just the ultimate fashion genius – but also a designer of silence. It took years for Galliano to get into that “silence”. Martens, who’s from a generation that studied Margiela at school, and whose work has been heavily influenced by Margiela since day one, is a “loud” designer. As in “pop-loud”.

That says a lot about why his first collection for the house lacked the soul-touching subtlety of Martin – or Galliano – and instead relied heavily on straightforward references, such as the masks. READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Less is More. Y/Project AW24

March 15, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Y/Project‘s Glenn Martens proved this season that sometimes less can be really more. The high profile and influential designer owned the fact his brand faces financial pressures and cancelled his runway show. In response, an important discourse opened up on the internet: the current industry system isn’t really working for independent brands. “Very honestly, we had a cash flow issue,” Martens candidly said. “We did the commercial showroom during men’s week, and we actually did grow. But at a certain point you have to make a choice. It’s €450,000 for a show, or €450,000 for pre-payment for production and making sure the collection is on time on the sales floor.” That Martens chose production and the sales floor will benefit his team and his brand in the end, of course. And somehow, the autumn-winter 2024 collection benefited too from that decision, because the lookbook is brilliant. Everyone from his father to to Interview‘s Mel Ottenberg and Purple‘s Olivier Zahm to his favorite stylists Haley Wollens and Camille Bidault Waddington is captured in the line-up. For the new collection Martens said he was thinking of pleurants, the sculptures of mourners that decorated tombs in medieval times, an instinct motivated by a sudden personal loss. He also mentioned Umberto Eco’s Middle Ages murder mystery The Name of the Rose. Putting his draping chops front-and-center, he added hoods to otherwise familiar garments like button-down shirts and fleece jackets, or inset sheer panels behind a row of buttons that gave his clothes a slouchy asymmetric shape. Some pieces featured manipulable velcro pieces that let their wearers adjust their silhouettes in the same way his bendable wire has been used in the past. A coat, for example, can convert into a cape, while a painterly floral print skirt can completely change form. Other pieces were shrouded with sheer net. The veiled pant suit gave the term fashion nun new meaning.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Weirdly Fascinating. Y/Project SS24

October 4, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Y/Project‘s Glenn Martens continues to push the limitations of fabrics in ways only he knows how. Like proposing swollen jeans that frothed in off-kilter formations, or controlling heaps off the fabric into severe hooded bomber jackets dyed in ecclesiastical purple. Warped and wonderfully weird, other standouts from the spring-summer 2024 collection included distorted negligee frocks worn with necklaces shaped like snakes (a Britney Spears moment), crumpled up crop tops, and a series of metal foil gowns that looked as if they were constructed from molten lava. This is a designer firmly in his own league.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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It’s a Party. Diesel SS24

September 21, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The Diesel show had a lot to say. But in the end, I thought Glenn Martens lost his focus, as the collection went in too many directions and roamed into pure entertainment. But then, Diesel is the go-to brand for hedonism. 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 huge runway that stretched long into the huge crowd (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). Dieselized parodies of old-school movie posters appeared on the garments, which in majority were distressed, acid-washed and double layered. 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. But it also read very Mugler. Destroyed tuxedos, half red carpet and half apocalypse, were the masculine counterpoint. Artisanal pieces included dresses handmade in shredded denim or burned mesh. Several models were caked in grayish ochre mud that matched the tone of their looks. 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.

Performance-Wear. Diesel Resort 2024

June 7, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

“We are continually evolving, it is about continuity,” said Glenn Martens regarding his process of reviving Diesel, and the democratic aspect of his resort 2024 offering. He added: “Perhaps more than anything I can say that what we did better this time was to take more carryover stories from the runway and 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 sultry, 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 harmniously 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 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.