The creative director who re-create Diesel: Who is Glenn Martens?

“We have more to do than just produce beautiful t-shirts,” says Glenn Martens in an interview with Vogue. The journey he embarked on with Diesel is still fairly new, but he has already expanded the boundaries of the brand considerably. More precisely, the designer manages to bring Diesel's DNA together with a different point with his own vision.

In fact, it would be fair to say that it has been a long time since the bells of change began to ring for the brand. Diesel, whose foundations were laid by Renzo Rosso in 1978, left its mark on a period with its collections and advertising campaigns in the first place, but it started to become difficult to stand up with the changing fashion perception. It even filed for bankruptcy in 2019. With Glenn Martens taking over as creative director in October 2020, there's no doubt that things will change. So, what kind of background Martens has, and what successes he has achieved in the fashion world, let's explore together:

Surprising introduction to the world of fashion

Born in Bruges, Belgium, Glenn Martens actually holds a degree in interior architecture. After applying with just a few sketches to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, he was accepted and later graduated first in class.

Y/Project is the turning point of his career

While working as an assistant to Y/Project creative director and founder Yohan Serfaty, Serfaty's death in 2013 changed the balance of the brand. Because Martens later became the head of Y/Project, reaching an important point in his career as a designer, and has been creating successful collections since 2013.

Winner of the ANDAM Fashion Award

Martens is also the recipient of ANDAM, a French fashion award established in 1989 by Nathalie Dufour as a joint venture of the French Ministry of Culture and the Defi fashion organization. While being the winner of this award with Y/Project in 2017, he was deemed worthy of a special award by ANDAM again in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, together with Marine Serre.

No stranger to the diesel world

Collaborating with the brand as part of the brand's Red Tag Project in 2018, the designer prepared a special collection in which denim and leather were the leading roles.

Continue with the Jean Paul Gaultier Couture collection

Jean-Paul Gaultier continues his couture collection collaboration with Sacai, this time with Glenn Martens. Moreover, both the fashion house and the designer are not strangers to each other. After graduating, Martens started working as a young designer for G2, a women's front collection and menswear brand under Jean Paul Gaultier.

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