“I think this is the most storytelling that we’ve done in the last five years of Diesel,” Glenn Martens says boldly on Zoom, the day before Diesel’s FW26 show. I’m still in London, so I’ve studied pictures of the show set ahead of our call. The collection is based on a good walk of shame, which inspired the idea behind the set. “Think of all the parties Diesel has thrown in its 48-year history. We wanted to show that,” Martens says. “It’s an ocean of party regalia.”
Dive in, and you’ll find a visual history of the brand, with 50,000 artefacts from Diesel shows, parties, window displays, events, and offices, Martens explains. These include a giant dinosaur, an astronaut costume, a car, a motorbike, inflatable animals, lots of jewelry, clothes, and shoes, and a legion of toy Santas. “There are even things we have given each other for birthdays, objects from employees’ desks, and costumes worn at [Diesel founder and OTB chairman] Renzo Rosso’s birthday parties, because he always likes to have birthday parties,” Martens says, “It’s all kinds of things!”
The walk of shame-inspired collection is based on one of Diesel’s core values. “Diesel is about successful living. And part of successful living, of course, is about successful walks of shame,” Martens says with a smile. “As a brand, we have [always] engaged in parties and in celebration. This walk of shame, you own it, you’re gorgeous, you don’t really know where you woke up, how you woke up…But you leave, you’re happy and beautiful, and you don’t give a shit.”
The garments have been created with the memory of the party. Be it permanent twisting that you can’t uncrease, a layer of confetti on garments as if you’ve lain on the floor, or the print of a silhouette, like you laid on top of someone. “It’s a lot of engaging with the flaws and celebrating them,” adds Martens.
Building a world to reach the mass consumer
Since joining Diesel in 2020, Martens has become known for major runway spectacles, from a mountain of condom boxes (FW23) to a 7,000-person rave (SS24). This season’s temporary Diesel museum follows last season’s egg hunt, in which the brand planted Diesel looks in clear eggs across the city of Milan for the public to find. Those who were first to the eggs won various prizes, including 1DR bags. The first person to the final checkpoint won a custom Diesel look.
“We always have a key message. It’s always about re-engaging with the founding values of the brand,” Martens says. Those include democracy, successful living, and more responsible fabric sourcing. “Last season, we were very much about democracy. But this time around, there won’t be major public involvement. Sometimes it’s really complicated to do something democratic in a way that’s engaging. I’m a very simple fashion designer. I love [shows]. So I was like, let’s go back to the runway and push it even more.”
Under Martens’s stewardship, Diesel has undergone a brand turnaround. Revenues grew 13.1% in 2023, the first year since the designer’s debut Diesel show. And the premium label maintained growth (3.1%) in 2024, even as most luxury labels faltered. In parent company OTB’s fiscal 2025 earnings, group sales fell 5%, but Diesel is “the most profitable it’s been in a decade”, the company said on the earnings call. Before Martens, Diesel was primarily a brand for millennial men, with next to no Gen Z consumers. Women represented just 20% of revenues. But Martens has boosted its female and Gen Z user base, he says. Today, 16 to 25-year-olds represent a third of the business.
Diesel shows contribute heavily to Diesel’s success, Martens says, as they allow Diesel to capture the attention of its global customer, who is buying $60 T-shirts, rather than fashion fans obsessed with the construction of clothes. “We know 90% of our customers are not specifically fashion orientated,” he says. “Our customers, of course, get excited about the attitude toward the clothes, but it’s not always their first focus. As a lifestyle brand, you need to create energy, you need to create joy. And we do that with sets and concepts.” Martens references his brother, a longtime Diesel customer, who loves the world the brand builds, but wouldn’t know the first thing about resin or prints.
Today, consumers are obsessed with brand archives, which one might think influenced the Diesel concept. But while the Diesel set pay homage to the brand s near-50-year history, Martens wasn’t intending to be too nostalgic with the clothes themselves. “The thing is that we don’t really have such a crazy archive in garments. We were never about working on silhouettes or creative statements that were outside of the wardrobe. We want to build the wardrobe of a lifestyle brand. So is it sexy, is it biker, is it hot pants, is it treated denim? There’s no real nostalgia to the clothes. It’s less about aesthetics, and it’s more about attitude.”
Repurposed creativity
This isn’t the first time Diesel has built a set out of existing things. For SS25, the brand filled the show space with 14.2 tonnes of denim waste from its factories, which was recycled into new garments post-show. For FW25, the brand reused the inflatable sculptures from its SS23 show, covering them with graffiti from thousands of artists worldwide.
As well as in the set, Martens has also repurposed textiles and garments within the collection. All the faux fur jackets are made from deadstock from Diesel factories, patchworked together into jackets and coats. “That’s why we can’t really produce massive amounts of it,” Martens says, “but it is also quite expensive, so it’s OK.” There are also wool coats made from deadstock fabrics, with multiple different wools bonded together, not just from Diesel but from all brands that use their factories. This is in addition to Diesel denim, which uses 57 per cent recycled or regenerative organic fibres.
“We try to create fashion moments and showpieces with things that normally get burned. The same with the sets, all those things are just waiting there for nothing. Let’s give them a second life,” Martens says.
Of all the objects, when asked what his favorite is, Martens doesn’t hesitate: it’s a blue Murano glass butt plug, the SS23 show invite. “It’s a very stupid one, but it’s also a very personal one; there s a big story around it,” he laughs. Turns out, Martens’s dad — who is a “super strict” judge — attended that SS23 show, and not knowing the true purpose of the object, had proudly displayed it on his dining table, until an ex-colleague asked why he had a butt plug on display. “Whenever I see that butt plug, I’m always reminded,” Martens laughs.
Diesel is entering a new phase this year, since the appointment of CEO Andrea Rigogliosi. “That’s a good start. After three years and no CEO. So I need to understand what he wants to bring to the brand, but I know he’s on the same page. What I hear from the CEO is that we actually should try to celebrate what we’ve done already with Diesel it and push that even bigger and more, and stabilize something, which was already quite impressive. So there’s no need to re-question everything. It’s about solidifying the whole thing.”
There are challenges to the approach, mainly coming up with a new, exciting concept season after season. “We always have three concepts running at the same time, because one gets delayed, and we have that we might need to push things back a season. It’s very heavy for my production team,” Martens says. The egg hunt, for example, took two years to plan, because the brand needed permits to place the eggs around Milan. The condoms from FW23 were distributed to 500 Diesel stores post-show, but because they’re classed as a medical device, Diesel had to translate the product information for each country it operates in before sending them out. “There are so many stupid things around [the concepts] that we never really think about, which are doable, but just take a lot of work and process and alternative thinking,” Martens says.
He’s already planned the next two seasons, providing all goes to plan. “They’re a secret for now,” he says, “but you’ll see!”
