The show featured the biggest-ever inflatable sculpture
Scored with the throbbing booms of a techno soundtrack, Glenn Martens filled his arid arena on the outskirts of Milan with the world’s biggest-ever inflatable sculpture. Verified by Guinness, the new record-holder seemingly took the sensual shape of an orgy: lovers whose limbs were entangled in one another like some oversized modern-day Rodin. If that image said something about what unfolded on his Diesel runway, it’s perhaps that everything is magnified and made extreme through the lens of the contemporary youth Martens designs for. His collection was a no-holds-barred externalisation of the tumultuous feelings teenagers have carried around since the dawn of time, expressed in all the distressed denim, unravelling sweats and tattered embroideries Milan had to offer. And that’s saying a lot.
It was all about distress
“Renzo was the first person to commercialise distressed denim back in the ’70s,” Martens said backstage, referring to Diesel’s founder Renzo Rosso, who also owns its parent group Only The Brave. (Francesco Risso of Marni – another of the group’s brands – was in the audience.) Martens rarely left an inch of his denim-on-denim-on-denim-on-denim looks intact, distressing them to the nines in what often felt like an apocalyptic, dystopian, dismal representation of the world seen with young eyes. Or what? The Diesel designer smiled. “It’s very distressed, that’s for sure. They’re very ready to nail life,” he said of the generations growing up with increasingly reactionary reality. “They really wanna fuck you over and have fun. Not giving a shit is really important.”
5,000 people attended the show
Offering those young generations a moment of relief, Martens had invited nearly 5,000 – yes, three zeros – people to the arena to watch the show. “Diesel is democratic luxury. That’s why we opened up the show to 5,000 people on a first come, first served basis,” he said. It was a staggering number that calls for some cold, hard press release fact: The arena, we were told, held 4,800 guests out of which 3,000 were members of the public attending for free. When tickets went for sale on 1 September, they were sold out in 90 minutes. 70 percent of the tickets went to 18-25 year olds, while 1,600 fashion students from Milan were given free admission.
Martens didn’t mind doing it for the kids
Amassed outside the arena waiting to get in, these kids looked like something out of teen Mad Max, all mulletted and bleach-dyed and pierced, in big stompy boots and narrow sci-fi sunglasses. Inside, they could mirror their own wardrobes in the collection: grimy utilitarian skirt suits, reptilian miniskirts, ripped micro hot pants, minidresses covered in what looked like dried lava, and lingerie dresses on acid. There were mutating objects like sexy corsets hybridised with jeans and denim trousers that morphed into high-heeled boots. And a destroyed oversized hooded yellow tracksuit made a boy look delightfully like the Grim Reaper. “It’s really about the diversity of all the kids we love,” Martens said.
Diesel hits a youthful soft spot
If the crowds were to be believed – and it’s hard to argue with 5,000 people – Martens’s work at Diesel is resonating with a youth embodied by the idea of democratic luxury that he speaks about. Divided into four categories – denim, utility-wear, pop, and artisanal pieces (that can’t be industrialised) – the show had all the elements of any high fashion presentation. It’s what the kids of this digital – and, by the way, highly materialistic – age want, but on a level that appeals to them, speaks their language, and isn’t too complicated. Martens’s Diesel does that.
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