VOGUE: Glenn Martens Becomes Jean Paul Gaultier’s New Couture Collaborator /
By Mark Holgate
Glenn Martens has just officially become the busiest designer in fashion. (And let’s face it, these days that’s saying something.) Martens, the original and inventive talent behind Y/Project, who’s also the creative director of Diesel, is now adding a third gig to his packed schedule: Jean Paul Gaultier Couture. (Chitose Abe of Sacai presented the first designer-in-residence collection for Gaultier this past July.) Luckily for Martens’s packed calendar this will be a one-off engagement. He will show his vision of Gaultier’s haute couture, which has always been an incredible and energetic fusion of pop culture and time honoured artisanal craft, not to mention the visionary brilliance of JPG himself, in January 2022.
Understandably, Martens is psyched to be getting this honour, given how much he respects the founder of the house. “Jean Paul made everything seem possible,” Martens said on a phone call Thursday. “He brought freedom of speech, freedom of sex, to fashion. And he worked with values—values which are important and relevant to today. I do feel a strong connection to Jean Paul,” he went on to say. “We share a similar approach to fashion; not being so serious about it all, elevating things which don’t normally get elevated at French luxury and couture houses.” Here’s another couple of things they share: Both have slyly subverted the notions of tailoring—and each knows their way around witty, subversive renderings of denim.
It’s a bit of a full circle moment for Martens. After graduating from Antwerp’s Royal Academy, he went directly to work for Gaultier menswear, after an external juror at his degree show, a good friend of Gaultier’s, suggested he hire him. The experience left a profound impression on him. “I had friends who went elsewhere to work, and they were under a lot of pressure,” he said, “but with Jean Paul, it was about enjoying life, having fun. I try to make Y/Project the same: take the job seriously, but don’t ever poison the atmosphere.”
The two designers met for lunch the other week, and caught up. During their meeting, Gaultier told Martens he’d often felt like an outsider in fashion, precisely because he tried to live a life that wasn’t just about fashion—and then bring it into his work. “Jean Paul was interested in going to the clubs, to the underground,” said Martens. “He had a life beyond fashion, and because of that, he gave us things like street casting, which shifted the idea of the beauty of high luxury, giving us a different way of thinking about fashion. It was groundbreaking.”
As to the ground he will be breaking with his haute couture for the house, Martens doesn’t want to give away too much—but the notion of celebration will feature prominently. Ask him about his favorite collections, and two RTW offerings spring to mind—the tattoos and piercings of spring 1994 and the homage to the clothing of Orthodox Jewish people from fall 1993—as well as the ostrich feather fantasias which the designer was a whizz at for his couture.
“We’ve done gowns for Y/Project, but never sold one of them, they were show pieces,” Martens said, laughing. “But working on couture...it’s a chance to work with les petites mains, and spend time and really go deeply into the making of a dress. Couture is an absurd fairy tale,” he continued, “but it is like art: we cling onto it, and it makes us dream. And couture can do the same thing.”
i-D: MM6 MAISON MARGIELA SS22 /
MM6 Maison Margiela celebrates the cinematic surreality of everyday life
The house invited guests to a favourite Milanese haunt, where they presented a collection that revelled in elevating the ordinary.
By Maharo Seward
The overheard snippets of conversation; the jolly din of cutlery and clinking glasses; the odd mish-mash of people who all end up the same place for the same purpose: as quotidian as it may seem, the experience of sitting down in a bar or restaurant can often take on an almost cinematic tone, especially after having been deprived of it for so long. Gauging by the show they put on yesterday evening during Milan Fashion Week SS22, it’s evidently one of the things that the team over at MM6 Maison Margiela missed most over the long months of lockdown. In celebration of our collective return to our cities’ streets, restaurants and bars, they took to La Belle Aurore, an esteemed Milanese trattoria, to host an aperitivo on its surrounding streets.
While the collection itself may not have directly taken after the setting -- despite what a first glance at the primary coloured checks redolent of tablecloths might suggest -- it also leant into the idea of the surreal saturation of once-familiar experience as we discover them anew.
A giddy tipsiness seemed to inform the red and spruce green mylar checks printed directly onto écru denim jeans and skirts, subtly skewing with the movements and contours of the wearer, as well as intentionally warped prints seen on a version of last season’s gabardine coat, radically abbreviated to create a neat cropped jacket, the house’s iconic Japanese origami bag, and jersey-sleeved asymmetrical knits.
The surreal tinge of this season also owed much to the artists that the MM6 collective had turned to for inspiration. Building on last season’s ode to experimental composer Erik Satie, SS22 saw the team explore his writings, as well as the works of surrealist women artists like Claude Cahun and Meret Oppenheim, Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning. While certain motifs -- like the gravity-defying floats of foulards with in-built thin metal wires, and ‘impossible’ objects like lavender teabags turned into earrings and faux-fur covered luggage that; part of this season’s Eastpak collaboration -- subtly nod to their work, it’s in the empowered femininity that defines the collection that their legacies are most strongly felt. Offsetting billowing black jersey and satin lining evening dresses are trousers and cycling shorts that bring a sensual body-consciousness to the table, while bateau necklines and sleeveless chessboard tops boldly outline the décolleté.
With its range of motifs, techniques and references, this was a pretty eclectic collection, where it found its throughline, though, was in a sense of breezy irreverence, which shone through nowhere better than in this season’s sleeve story. Lopped off and reattached to pleated blouses, the side seams of tailored trousers and rubberised jeans, and even to the back panel of a Marigold yellow leather jacket, which, when tied up, cinched in the waist.
As quirky as these accoutrements may seem, they spoke to a sensibility that has long been at the house’s core: the commitment to creating clothes suitable for the everyday that are elevated into the supernormal by a skewiff sense of wit, humour and fun.
AnOther MAGAZINE: BTS OF MOLLY GODDARD SS22 /
Watch: Behind the Scenes of Molly Goddard’s Latest Collection
In a new film, Tegen Williams captures the intense final days leading up to Molly Goddard’s baby clothes-inspired Spring/Summer 2022 collection
By Alex Peters
Molly Goddard has released a new short film that goes behind the scenes of her latest Spring/Summer 2022 show, itself presented as a film during London Fashion Week. Directed by Tegan Williams, this new film gives the audience an all-access pass to the final few days leading up to the event. Here we get to see the process that goes into creating a show – the fittings, rehearsals, cups of coffee, set building, hemline touch-ups, Pret pastries, model corralling. An old family friend, and former Molly Goddard model herself, Williams is a familiar presence at the studio and her sense of naturalness in these spaces can be felt throughout the film.
“I’ve known everyone on the Molly Goddard team for so long – Molly, Alice (Goddard, Stylist) and Tessa (Griffith, Managing Director) since I was born,” says Williams. “I feel super comfortable in the studio, sometimes too comfortable I forget why I’m there!” While she has previously helmed BTS films for past seasons, as well as directing and editing the A/W21 collection remotely, Williams’s long-term relationships proved particularly crucial and meaningful this season when Goddard was navigating the intense times with her baby Frank, who makes various adorable cameos throughout the film.
“Having my newborn son with me whenever I came into the studio was a challenge and it made me thankful to be working with Tegen and Alice: people I’ve known forever and feel very comfortable with,” says Goddard. Having started designing for S/S22 while eight months pregnant, Goddard was influenced by baby clothing and the collection is subsequently filled with smocked trapeze tops, ruffled bouncy dresses, and ballet flats.
While cuddling Frank was Williams’s biggest highlight, she was equally as excited to work with “choreographer god”, as Goddard describes him, Les Child. “Working with Les is always a highlight! I was so chuffed he said yes to working on this show. He’s a legend and as much as he doesn’t like me filming him he’s too brilliant to ignore!” Williams says. In yet another season without an audience, Child collaborated with the team in creating a safe digital way of presenting the collection whilst still giving the excitement of a proper show. Although as Williams says, “Molly’s clothes don’t fanfare, they’re brilliant whatever.”
10 MAGAZINE: KIKO KOSTADINOV SS22 /
By Paul Toner
A sunkissed prelude to London Fashion Week, which officially kicks off tomorrow, Tuesday night’s Kiko Kostadinov womenswear show was a love letter to summers been and gone. Held in an intimate salon setting just off Brick Lane, shadowed by East London skyscrapers, designers Laura and Deanna Fanning had their sights set on their native Australia. “The collection was a bit like a trip down memory lane,” explained the pair, who haven’t been able to return home since the pandemic began.
Feeling nostalgic, the sisters began thinking back to their adolescence, in particular, their beach getaways as kids, where over 30 of their friends and cousins would pile into a small beach house. “You’d go camping and share each other’s clothes,” said Deanna, “maybe putting on your best friend’s cardigan that’s a little too small for you. Or your dad’s linen shirt, a fabric that you wouldn’t normally wear.”
Thinking of salty skin, aloe vera-ed tan lines and toes coated in sand, the pair’s retrofuturistic womenswear – synonymous with geometric shapes and spiral pattern cutting – felt loose and free. Sunset hues glazed space-dyed ribbed cardigans, which came asymmetric, turned upside down and held in rippled formations like a crisp towel on damp skin – worn over satin slip dresses with knitted cut-outs that looked coral-like. Elsewhere, figure-hugging “bootleg” jeans and chiffon twinsets printed with Australian daisies felt made for places like Barcelona, where you can emerge from the beach and head straight into the bustling inner-city.
Models walked wearing seashell necklaces – like you and your siblings would make on long August days – and carried new iterations of the brand’s Trivia bag, as well as a new accessory: the Twisted Spiral Shopper, a glossy, lemon-yellow number that elevates the everyday tote. Stepping back out into a somewhat chilly East London, it felt like we’d just returned from a beach getaway of our own. In the words of All Saints, take me to the beach.
i-D: MARTINE ROSE /
Martine Rose: "We found new ways of telling stories"
The category-defying designer on how she found a way to bring community and curiosity to her immersive digital show.
By Felix Petty
How best to describe the work of Martine Rose? It’s a truism but it defies easy categorisation, or at least the categories you could slot the work into fail to do it justice, reduce it to less than the sum of its parts. We could say it’s a label inspired by clubbing or community or music or subcultures or sportswear. And those things are true to an extent, and those descriptions root it in a very specific kind of London fashion and style scene, and place it in a continuum of London fashion history. It’s all correct but it’s more than that.
The label began life as a shirting brand in 2007 and it has grown methodically and organically over the last 14 years into maybe the most exciting, interesting and thought-provoking menswear label that London (probably even the world) has had the pleasure to wear.
“Constant curiosity,” Martine says, when asked to sum up what is at the root of her creativity. “I’m motivated by curiosity; in the way we see things, see ourselves, the way we wear things, in what fashion means and challenging how we see ourselves in the fashion industry. In the broadest sense, curiosity is at the heart of everything.”
That curiosity leads, in part, to the fantastic inventiveness of her designs, which have always been about twisting those subcultural ur-garments into something new; archetypes get twisted, fused together, reborn and remade. Football hooligan meets New Romantic; junglist meet City Boy; Buffalo meets mods or rockers or spivs or B-Boys, or any combination of these. It’s a fantasy or a dreamworld, a harmonic coming together of every single one of London’s style tribes.
So it’s a London story in a sense, or a retelling of London’s style history, and her work is a chaotic anthropology of the city’s underground, it’s in love with the idea of clothing as signifiers of identity. It’s rooted in fashion history but it is also a living history in that it is an exploration of the underground as it exists now. Even as so many fret about the death of subculture in the internet era, Martine has willed her own back into being, forming her own tribe and community around the label. And it’s important to stress how important that community is to her. “Although I don’t think about it that much,” she says, of building and nurturing that community, in a typically humble fashion. “It comes from genuine interest in people and our environment. Talking about curiosity as a predominant part of the label, relationships aren’t manufactured; they come from a real connection to people, places, communities, from everything.”
We’re here to discuss Martine’s latest project/show/collection. It was presented this February in the middle of the third lockdown in the UK, when we had been stuck indoors, on and off, for just under a year. The show was titled What We Do All Day? and it was a reaction to that enforced homeboundness. The show dropped you into a virtual, computer generated housing unit, created by International Magic, which formed its own enclosed world, and where you could move between rooms and observe Martine-clad people at work or play, lounging around, drinking wine, watching football, cutting their hair. These people were everywhere from Palestine to Mexico to London. Essentially, it was a collage of 24 short films, presented as a one off event, that tenderly explored how we are living right now, offering a glimpse into Martine’s audience, which could well be anyone. And it came back to that idea and ideal at the heart of the label: community and curiosity.
“At the beginning, I was very hesitant,” Martine says, about the show, and working in a digital realm to present a collection. “We’ve always been attached to reality, going into spaces and utilising the atmosphere and environments. We had to ask ourselves, with the absence of this physical element, how we could get that atmosphere, texture and warmth in a digital way? Once we really developed these questions, we worked out how the digital environment could be used to punch holes into reality. We found new ways of telling stories, of showing the collection and drawing people in.”
It’s easy to question fashion’s relevance and use at a time like this, especially the luxury fashion industry of branded, expensive products. The last year has been a lockdown-induced limbo of no new clothes and nowhere to wear old ones anyway. The irrelevance of the old system – the tyranny of superficial newness – increasingly feels out of joint with the times. Martine, however, is happy to stand apart, take things slow, or at her own pace, to revisit ideas again, return to old collections, garments, slogans, and to continually find new ways to illuminate those “old” ideas.
Martine has never been that obsessed with fashion’s blunt seasonality. She shows once a year, maybe, or drops off from the schedule for a few seasons. Maybe she only shows one look and that’s the show, or she releases collaborations in unusual ways – a Nike drop over Craigslist for instance, or for a Napapijri collaboration she took a load of people to Ayia Napa for the weekend and put on a club night. It takes incredible confidence to do this, to do what you want, how you want, to stay true to yourself over 14 years when the rest of the industry demands you force your creativity to work in certain, reducible, identikit ways.
And when Martine does show, she creates the most incredible experiences, emotional love letters to her hometown and its residents. She shows, famously, in “unusual” locations, but really they are just the places that she lives and works in because that’s where these clothes make sense; an indoor market on the Seven Sisters Road, a climbing wall in Tottenham, a cul-de-sac in Kentish Town, her daughter’s school. The shows are about fashion as something real because Martine is a designer who understands that fashion only becomes real when it’s inserted into the everyday lives of people.
Ultimately, Martine is inspired by those people, too. She’s always been adept at reworking garments that are already there, finding inspiration in the kind of things that her friends might be wearing, or remembering the garments of her older brothers or cousins and their friends, and drawing rose-tinted inspiration from the wardrobes of those slightly older, slightly cooler people we looked up to when we were younger. The way one of them might layer together something as simple as a jumper and a shirt and reveal something new about both, how a jacket could be tied around the neck maybe, or what shoes they wore with what jeans, or the clash of formal and informal in the way clothes are worn. Tracksuit bottoms with loafers, maybe, or cycling shorts with a silk shirt. The rare beauty of the coat pulled from the obscurity of a charity shop rack that doesn’t quite fit right but it’s wrong in an amazing, unique way. And all those emotions tied to the clothes we wear find their way into Martine’s designs.
Her personal history provides much of the inspiration for what she does. Situated in it are a few foundational myths, like clubbing at 14 in Vauxhall, or dancing on Clapham Common in the dawn light during the Second Summer of Love. But within this specificity there is a universal appeal, because there is a universal nostalgia for a moment of belonging, for something bigger than ourselves, for community and curiosity. Martine’s shows and clothes are about that moment of belonging, bringing people together. It’s about situating the magical nature of fashion – its transformational abilities – in reality.
So Martine’s clothing is about magical realism in that sense. Or maybe we can call it the subcultural baroque in the way that it’s about elaboration and symbiosis and mutation. It’s about how that ordinary garment, that pair of trousers, that jacket, can hold so much heroic weight, so much mythology. Then Martine takes that sartorial mythology and twists it around. “I guess I like the familiarity,” she says, of taking a garment apart and rebuilding it. “There are rules and parameters that come with familiarity and archetypes that really resonate with me. The garment must stay recognisable which gives me specific parameters to play with. That’s what first attracted me to menswear – there’s certain rules and I like the challenge that they bring. And applying this to something as iconic as a football top, for example, which is not only a garment that everyone knows but one that people have an emotional attachment to, gives it even tighter parameters for recreation. It makes even more interesting.”
Which is what I mean by describing Martine’s clothing as a kind of magical realism, these clothes which we know so well – the trench coat, the tracksuit bottom, the loafer etc – that are inflated, made heroic, made magical, without losing their reality. And fashion is usually so exclusionary, and that is part of its magic too, but there’s a confidence in letting people into your world, a confidence in what you do in allowing so many different people to take to it and become part of that world. It comes back to that idea of community. And ultimately, that’s about people (some of whom we interviewed below, people Martine works with, her collaborators, friends, accomplices, fans, models) and Martine Rose is the people’s designer.
Carlo Tinelli, Slam Jam
How did you meet Martine? We met at her atelier in North London to discuss the Napapijri project back in 2017. It was her birthday. Describe Martine in four words… Talent, family, identity, Janet Kay - Silly Games. What makes Martine such an important designer?Her way of blending cultural references together into a dream parallel universe. Do you have a favourite Martine moment? On top of every single show I must say the Ayia Napa trip. That was epic.
Carla Valdivia Nakatani, Designer and model in her AW21 show
How did you meet Martine? A few years ago I met Tamara here in Mexico and through her, I met Martine. Describe Martine in four words… Crazy, sexy, boy, woman. What makes Martine such an important designer? I take away so many personal reflections from Martine’s pieces and I think other people do as well.
Max Clark, Senior Fashion Editor at i-D
How did you meet Martine? We met via Max Pearmain when he was styling her first collections. What makes Martine such an important designer? She represents the things I find most exciting about London. She blends so many different cultures in music, wicked style, ethnicity and that’s what makes London what it is. Do you have a favourite Martine moment? The show in a cul-de-sac in Camden summed up everything she represents DIY, street culture, unpretentious, inclusive and modern.
Adam Rogers, Intelligent Magic
How did you meet Martine? Martine was introduced to our work by a mutual friend, and we had a call together the next day and started working together. Describe Martine in four words… Fearless, considerate, consistent, real.
Steve Terry, Wild Life Archive
How did you meet Martine? Through a combination of my wife Ebru and mate Max Pearmain who were both already friends with Martine. Describe Martine in four words… I’ll do it in three: Down. To. Earth. What makes Martine such an important designer? Right now it’s her ability to maintain her own label and express herself freely. How would you describe the creative community at the heart of the label? Everyone gets to bring their own individual style to the studio while contributing to Martine’s wider creative vision for the label. Kiran, Meera, Sasa, Lulu, Roxy, Sharna, Daniella to name a few, all lovely people.
Harry Fisher, owner of H-Town
Describe Martine in four words… Authentic, nurturing, nonconformist, humble. How would you describe the creative community at the heart of the label? Eclectic and global. The brand is relatable to so many different groups of people and ways of life. Do you have a favourite Martine moment? The Martine Rose x Napapijri Ayia Napa trip we went on in 2019 was one of the best moments ever. It was so fun, and we all made some great memories for life!
Zainab Jama, PR for Supreme
How did you meet Martine? I met Martine in the dance, at our spiritual home, Plastic People. Describe Martine in four words… Fun, Smart, Dynamic, Considered and Considerate. What makes Martine such an important designer? The exceptional taste and very rare, special and unique way Martine centres her community to bring her vision and execution to life. How would you describe the creative community at the heart of the label? Like a family that always gets on! I’ve been lucky enough to work with Martine on a few projects, her team and collaborators are an extension of her wonderful self.
Isabel Bush, casting director for Martine Rose
Describe Martine in four words… Warm, genuine, kind, perceptive. How would you describe the creative community at the heart of the label? They really value the individuals they work with, and give people the space to flourish while still maintaining a really distinctive creative vision. It feels very genuine and open.
VOGUE RUNWAY: Y/PROJECT SS22 /
Speaking at his usual million-miles-a-minute pace, Glenn Martens reported that, actually, for the first time in forever this was a slow Y/Project collection “in that we have had six months to develop it, which is great. Because it’s meant that we’ve been able to go much deeper, across categories… and this is the big story of the collection for me,” he said. “Because of course we are not the type of brand that will ever sell that kind of ‘This season I flew to Hawaii and was inspired by’ narrative, anyway.” Putting aside the thought that a Ha-Y/Project collection could be kind of great, you could see what Martens was getting at in a series of typically fiendishly ingenious innovations that ran across the collection.
These included the braided knits that rose from the waist to tangle at the neckline in order to allow the wearer to rearrange the garment in various permutations according to inclination. As Martens said: “You have to choose where exactly to put your head within it: we always try to push people to experiment with the garments and really embrace them and have fun with them.” Double mini-dresses could be worn with the organza top layer pulled down for a more classic look, or pulled up by drawstring for a broken effect. Bucket bags came structured, as did many of the garments, with wire inserts that invited the carrier to reshape their architecture as they pleased. The ‘Melissa’ shoes, in rubber, were the chicest vegan beach-ready footwear you will ever see.
A substantial collaboration with the 110-year-old Italian sportswear brand Fila started with Martens and his crew poring through the company’s archives to find the most characteristic looks from his past, which were then subject to Y/Project woo-woo redos. So a red tracksuit cut in with white branding was rearrangeable via popper to allow you to dictate how much logo you were flashing. Look 33’s skirt was in fact a pant, with a hole to the top left of the garment that the wearer had ejected her leg from. There was also a fiercely-edged remix of the brand’s emblematically oversized 1990s basketball sneaker, the Grant Hill.
The Fila interlude receded to be replaced by garments that were also work-out ready. A men’s short-sleeved shirt came with a series of panels whose arrangement demanded that you decide whether you preferred pattern or plain, while some awesome gowns in jersey and velvet could be worn in multiple ways. Y/Project clothes are the Swiss Army Knives of fashion, multifunctional, versatile, and highly handsome to look at—democratically experimental garments that allow the consumer to be just as creative as the producer.
By Luke Leitch for Vogue
HYPEBAE: GLENN MARTENS MAKES DIESEL DEBUT WITH SHORT FILM FOR SS22 /
A trippy visual blurring the lines between dream and reality.
Following his appointment as creative director in October 2020, Glenn Martens has now debuted his first runway show for Diesel. The Spring/Summer 2022 collection, showcased through a short film by Frank Lebon at Milan Fashion Week, marks a new beginning for the label by fusing new styles with its signature denim.
The visual opens with rising model Ella Snyder at a party wearing a white tee and jeans. Blurring the lines between dream and reality, the video reveals the range in four sections as Snyder goes from a club to the urban streets, a futuristic hallway and a red room.
Highlights include belts woven through garments to hold tops and dresses in place. Multi-pocket denim pants – made using deadstock Diesel fabrics – come with integrated cowboy-style boots, reminding us of Balenciaga‘s 2018 “pantashoes” trend. The house’s heritage is further explored through a range of blazers, shirts and trousers with trompe l’œil details, which are also found on tights with denim illusion prints. The collection closes with organza dresses and skirts in shades of blue, red and more.
By YeEun Kim for Hypebae