From sustainability to Julia Fox, Glenn Martens’s first 18 months at Diesel have been dedicated to aligning the 1978-founded denim disruptor with both the deeper values and shallower preoccupations of now. In this pre-spring collection he continued that mission through a further two-pronged emphasis on the serious and the superficial, with both sides of that binary expressed via Martens’s expertly twisted aesthetic.
The serious bedrock continues to be in expanding the sustainable operations of this hybrid house. A reconfigured, jersey-specific core line named Diesel Essentials will from this collection forward be made from all-organic cotton, trimmed in recycled materials, and finished with “low impact” treatments and prints. Prime examples here included a fluoro trio of ruched asymmetrical skirts worn under a hoodie, tee, and turtle. On the side, Martens expanded the recently-launched Diesel Rehab Denim capsule—made from denim off-cuts, recycled cotton, and recycled elastane—into pieces including the season’s decadently pocketed utility pants and padded jackets. He added that a for-now exclusively Italian pilot scheme to buy-back and repurpose vintage Diesel through resale or upcycling is showing promising results.
This responsible practice lends Martens’s Diesel ample clear-of-conscience wiggle room to play around with the brand’s ethos, which he said is: “to have fun, enjoy life, and be successful in every situation that you are in.” Highlights for sybarites included trompe-l’oeil bumsterish cut jeans for women and men, those ornamentally utilitarian pieces, acres of (sustainable) distressed and sometimes-waterproofed denim, retro-futuristic and logo-heavy clingy metallic knit dresses, gothically scripted skintight motowear, and a surprising diversion into tailoring. “It’s not real tailoring—there’s no camel hair,” said Martens of the jackets, coats, and pants that play blue denim against a charcoal wool-mix. But I like the minimalism of it, plus the first drop of this collection is timed for Christmas.” With Martens at the helm, Diesel has in short order pretty much defined its new manifesto of sustainable semi-seditious sexiness.
