“Diesel is denim.” So droned the AI voice that had already read and re-read the Wikipedia entry on denim before this show started. We contemplated an arresting and scary ocean of denim scraps and off-cuts that had been brought in from Diesel facilities then spread across the floor of the cavernous out-of-town hangar in which the show was held again this season. As well as looking so unsettlingly striking, this gesture was meant to emphasize how under the design direction of Glenn Martens and the direction of the Rosso clan this brand has pivoted from using three percent to 57 percent regenerative, organic, or recycled cotton in the manufacture of its core material. Considering the scale of Diesel’s business, that is a significant achievement.
Diesel’s reinvention of denim applies to product as well as process. Chatting before the show, Martens mooted that around 80 per cent of this collection’s looks contained it. At the beginning, this was mostly self-evident: distressed and tufted hot pants, washed five-pocket classics with pressed creases, spaghetti-strap dresses, skirts and denim-jersey separates with shaggily horizontal loose weave sections. Then it became harder to parse. The tailored pieces and dresses in prince of wales check were, it turns out, printed denim—there to show how a garment with a refined and precious facade could be rendered as robustly tough as workwear.
Without having had the chance to check, I’d wager that the next section’s starring garments—the outerwear and dresses edged with enormous reefs of fringing at the collar and neckline—were denim-free (and I’d probably lose). Denim or not, their banks of sliced tendrils loosely tied as both decoration and support made their wearers attractively appear as if they’d narrowly escaped a close call with an office shredder.
Accessories included wraparound shades whose frames were in production roughed up to be all individually different in detail and patina, and a new handbag whose name, the Double D, honored the Diesel branding tradition and was broadcast buxomly in its shape. There was denim boucle, denim jacquard, and a Neo from The Matrix style monkish gown in embossed (not treated) indigo denim before a closing section of tied and wrapped jersey garments printed with vintage Diesel scarves that shifted the pattern a little. “We’ve been doing a lot of different things here over the last few seasons, so I think this was the moment to remind everyone about our denim again,” said Martens. He certainly achieved his aim.
