Andreas Melbostad is perfectly well aware that people come to Diesel Black Gold for jeans and leather jackets. The question is, how do you spice up those staples and keep the DBG clientele coming back for more? Melbostad had a couple solid ideas about how to do that this season—the first of which, in essence, was to give his clothes a splash of razzle-dazzle. At an appointment, the designer explained that he was thinking about the city at night, lights sparkling in the darkness, and with that in mind, he threaded materials like Lurex jacquard and metallic leather through the collection. A metallic blue leather bomber was a showy instance of the strategy; cropped denim inset with a stripe of the jacquard, as well as another stripe of velvet, expressed it with a bit more understatement. Elsewhere, he elaborated on the nightscape theme via appliquéd tees and sweatshirts and go-to ribbed turtlenecks glittery with Lurex.
Melbostad’s other key idea was to take durable outerwear, such as parkas and motorcycle jackets, and play with their proportions. Mostly, he was interested in expanding the volume of his coats—but to keep them from swamping the body, he inserted zippers in parkas and cropped the front of his oversize biker jackets, the better to give the shapes some dimension (and literal breathing room).
The most interesting pieces here, meanwhile, were the velvet-printed jeans. These didn’t fit into the collection’s main plotline (they were more of a B story, as screenwriters might say), but they proved that Diesel is continuing to push technical frontiers where denim is concerned. Velvet had been printed—three-dimensionally—onto the surface of jeans, either in a mottled pattern or all over. The mottled pairs were a touch eccentric, but the ones covered in velvet gave the glam effect of velvet trousers without carrying all that material’s substantial weight. Paired with one of those Lurex turtlenecks, they’ll be just the thing for a night on the town.
