| Glenn Martens presented his final collection for Diesel on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2026, during Milan Fashion Week’s Spring 2027 shows. The show marked the end of his six-year tenure as Creative director, a role he began in 2020. Martens is moving full-time to Maison Margiela, where he has served as creative director since 2024. Model Ella Snyder, who opened his debut Diesel show in Spring 2022, closed the farewell presentation. Diesel has not yet named his successor. |
Six years is an eternity in the world of fashion Creative directors, where the average tenure barely clears three seasons before a company moves on. Glenn Martens spent that entire time transforming Diesel from a jeans label into one of the industry’s most-watched names. On Tuesday, he ensured that his exit would be as memorable as his arrival. Diesel marked the end of an era at Milan Fashion Week this week, and the Spring 2027 collection ensured that no one in the audience was left unmoved. Martens, who spent six years remaking the Italian denim house, sent his final looks down a red-lit runway, closing a chapter that transformed a jeans label into one of fashion’s most talked-about brands. The show he delivered on Tuesday afternoon was loud, physical, and unmistakably his own.
Martens arrived at Diesel in 2020 with a wardrobe consisting, by his own account, of little more than T-shirts and five-pocket trousers. What he built from there became something closer to a worldview. Denim was sliced, coated, and laser-etched until it resembled leather. Knitwear grew orchid-shaped cutaways that seemed to eat into the fabric. Foil-printed surfaces cracked open to reveal hints of other garments underneath in a trompe l’oeil effect, a trick he relied on repeatedly because it always worked.
For this Spring 2027 collection, the theme of disintegration that he has explored for years reached its most complete form. T-shirts and sweatshirts were shredded down to threads. The tailoring looked twisted and half-undone, as if a garment had been caught mid-change and left that way. A trucker jacket fused with a quarter-zip pullover. A jean jacket met a polo shirt halfway. Trousers stretched into pantasocks, a hybrid of jeans and hosiery that captured the designer’s appetite for combining unlikely categories.
The soundtrack did plenty of the storytelling, too. A slow techno build gave way to a stripped-down, breathless remix of Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby,” and, as the track intensified, performers seated among the audience began an increasingly theatrical display of affection. It was staged, certainly, but it encapsulated everything Martens has stood for at this brand: unfiltered joy, a nod to excess, and no apologies.
He closed the show the way he opened his run here six years ago. Model Ella Snyder, who wore his first Diesel look in Spring 2022, returned for the final look tonight. The symmetry was no accident. Backstage, Martens spoke about the team he built rather than himself. He called them a group of butterflies who had transformed alongside the brand. He said he was leaving with a strong foundation and colleagues prepared for whatever comes next.
For Martens, what comes next is Maison Margiela, where he already serves as Creative director. He can now give the house his full attention instead of splitting time between two labels. The move makes sense on paper. Both brands feature reconstruction and unfinished edges. However, Margiela’s style is quieter and more conceptual than the lively atmosphere Martens cultivated at Diesel. Renzo Rosso built Diesel’s reputation on a philosophy of joyful, sometimes reckless living and found in Martens a designer willing to push that philosophy as far as the runway allows.
Under Martens, Diesel never asked to be taken quietly. Martens treated denim like a sculptor treats clay, and audiences responded because the clothes looked as bold on a phone screen as they did in person. Whether his successor maintains that intensity or tones things down, the Spring 2027 collection sets the bar high. Six years in, Martens wore sunglasses indoors for the first time at a Diesel show. It was a small detail, but it read like a man finally at ease enough to take his bow. This gesture says more about the arc of his tenure than any garment on the runway: a designer who spent six years fighting for the brand’s relevance finally allowing himself to enjoy his success.
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Diesel has not named a replacement yet, and Rosso has said only that an announcement will come in due time. Whoever inherits the role will take over a brand that has been transformed almost beyond recognition from the one Martens found in 2020. This transformation is the clearest measure of his accomplishments at Diesel – and sets an almost impossible bar for his successor: not to match a collection, but to match a complete reinvention of what a heritage denim label can be.
