“Dirty stop out” is the charming British phrase applied those who find a night so delightful they don’t get home until morning. “Walk of shame” is a widely used term for the return journey. At Diesel this afternoon, Glenn Martens considered the house motto, For Successful Living, and set about rehabilitating the reputation of the post hook-up (or post all-nighter) wardrobe.
Speaking pre-show, he said: “It’s that idea of waking up and maybe having no clear idea of where you are. You have to get dressed and run off in the morning from that scenario, that kinky night. Everything is messed up: you obviously don’t have time to look at yourself in the mirror. But when you’re on the street you look as hot as fuck because you own it. You’ve had a really good night, and everything is fantastic, so you just shine from the inside.”
Martens opened his collection with a series of generic standards that had been thoroughly tumbled and seemed all the fresher for it. A white tank top, denim outerwear, knit twinsets, half-button shirts and button down skirts were all hoiked, yanked, and agitated across the body. These looked great, and were a little reminiscent of the free-spirited conceptual hotness of Martens’ Y/Project output. Denims were coated in denim to retain stiffness despite movement, as if splashed with last night’s cocktails.
Knitwear incorporating embroidered needlepoint florals and denim lined with upcycled felt blankets (and blankets lined with denim) suggested the wearers had grabbed the first thing on hand to cover themselves as they bolted out the door. The florals were inset ingeniously into the necklines of a color smudged ivory cable cardigan worn above a rib-knit romper, or into the collars of cotton shirting or knit tank tops. At the end the florals sprouted again on the stiffened surface of quilt wraps. Boyfriend T-shirts and check shirts were layered, twisted, and wrapped into each other to create single, apparently messed-up jumpsuits and dresses. A pale blue silk skirt hung close to ankle length apart from at the left thigh, where it snagged upwards as if caught.
Velvet flocked denim, wrap around mini-shorts, pantaboots, roughly contrasting pleated dresses (some apparently with hems tucked unwittingly into underwear), and a cluster of patched faux fur coats and gilets made from Diesel’s trove of deadstock added to the dressed-excellently-in-the-dark mix. Towards the end of the collection Martens heaved what he termed “a vomit of color” into the action: leather and shearling outerwear, shirting and pants were painted as powerfully as The Wiggles. Flattened legged jeans and twinset cotton tops were more delicately color drenched in confetti colors.
These tones reflected the set, an anarchic installation of tens of thousands of props from shows and parties going back to the 1980s that were dug out of the Diesel archive. I spent this show being stared down by a stuffed (fake) zebra in a hat who was surrounded by a scattering of condoms, a slice of pizza and a cigarette. Amongst the props was a bed containing an apparently unoccupied stuffed pig costume, arranged as if sleeping. As the finale passed it stirred, sat up, and looked around with startled cartoon eyes.
