At Milan Fashion Week, Diesel creative director Glenn Martens delivered a Fall 2026 collection that reframed shame as pleasure and chaos as confidence.
Staged on the opening day of Milan Fashion Week, the show abandoned rigid product groupings in favor of something looser, louder, and more instinctive. Martens leaned fully into Diesel’s irreverent DNA, proposing that “successful living” is less about polish and more about pleasure preferably the messy kind.
The collection was built around the idea of owning the “walk of shame,” those hazy mornings after nights best remembered in fragments. “Everything is wrongly dressed,” Martens said, “but it’s super sexy and hot.” That tension between disorder and desire became the emotional backbone of the lineup.
Twists, Layers and Morning-After Glamour
Twisting, wrapping, and aggressive textile manipulation signatures also seen in Martens’ work at Y/Project dominated the silhouettes. Knits and denim were stiffened with resin, crystallized into permanent creases, or sculpted to appear mid-motion. Trompe-l’oeil looks mimicked T-shirts awkwardly tucked into skewed miniskirts, as if dressed in the dark.
Tailoring followed the same logic. Coats and suits were constructed from compressed layers of wool scraps, while foiled fabrics cracked open to reveal hidden patterns beneath. Faux furs appeared in bold, colorful patchworks, adding texture and humor.
Floral motifs surfaced in intarsia knits with neckline cutouts and in pleated dresses collaging mismatched botanical prints. Washed velvet, faded denim, and painted leather injected color — sometimes softly worn-in, sometimes sharply blocked reinforcing the collection’s off-kilter energy.
Martens pushed the concept further with glitter-dusted skin and crystal-encrusted denim and T-shirts, a wink to the glow (or glitter) that lingers long after the party ends.
The irreverence extended beyond the clothes. At the center of the venue sat an installation made up of more than 50,000 objects pulled from Diesel’s archives and offices worldwide campaign props, memorabilia, and cultural clutter. Inflatable dolls, Santa figurines, branded underwear, plush toys, sex toys, confetti, balloons, and even slices of real pizza coexisted in chaotic harmony.
The display invited guests to imagine the stories behind each object a visual archive of Diesel’s anything-goes universe, where contradictions aren’t just allowed, they’re celebrated.
With Fall 2026, Martens didn’t just design clothes he staged a mindset. In Diesel’s world, shame is subjective, fun is personal, and confidence comes from owning the mess.
