How Glenn Martens Is Changing The Fashion Show Scene One Invite At A Time
One of the longest-standing questions surrounding fashion weeks and runway shows is, ‘who actually deserves to be invited?’. Fashion journalists, members of the press and industry professionals, of course. But, what about celebrities? Fashion bloggers and influencers? Why should someone with 50K on Instagram get invited to a Chanel show? While this conversation is not redundant, although certainly a complex one, Glenn Martens bought a whole new perspective to the party at the Diesel Spring 2023 show in Milan yesterday.
It turns out we’ve been ignoring one major party…the fashion student.
Thankfully, the venue picked by Martens for this celebration of denim was large enough to host several thousand guests, 3000 of these seats were filled with those who had bagged their free tickets online. A further 1,600 seats were reserved for fashion students, with only around 200 invites being given to professionals and influencers, including the likes of Julia Fox and Gucci’s Marco Bizzarri.
Image: Filippo Fior
The collection itself was fun and vivacious, feeling wholeheartedly Martens. The four inflatable human-shaped figures that filled the centre of the venue really gave a sense of the entire collection - and, this did actually break a Guinness World Record for largest inflatables, which is a fun factoid for you. The collection had a vast array of aged and distressed denim, to which Glenn said “All of the pieces are ‘imperfect’ through treatment and design. This is something I like but it also goes back to that democratic instinct: we know Diesel is a brand for anyone who wants to relate, whoever they are, however they feel: everyone is individual and no two people are the same. Plus the piece is supposed to look ‘broken’ so that you can live with it forever—it is unbreakable.”
This sense of belonging goes far further than the individual items of clothing or the large sexual balloons, it goes back to the people invited. Martens clearly feels that fashion is for everyone, and that means including everyone in the entire process. Why should runways be reserved for the elite of the industry and those with a large following? Surely, we should invite the future into these rooms because, after all, that is what students are.
Perhaps this will be the birth of a new fashion trend - inclusivity.
