MFW: At Diesel Glenn Martens gives denim a makeover

Glenn Martens knows denim. At Y/Project the Belgian-born designer offers cutaway jeans, cowboy jeans, trumpet jeans and peepshow jeans, but at Diesel’s Milan fashion week show, his first since appointed as the brand's creative director, denim was seriously subverted.

There was the oversized, the ripped, the fantastical and the all enveloping, like the capacious denim fur coats that swept the floor and swallowed the wearer.

Jeans, like t-shirts, are the most democratic of fibres, but not all jeans are equal. The ingenuity, engineering and construction of Diesel’s AW22 collection raises the stakes of denim design to a new level.

Diesel is not a luxury brand and refreshingly it does not pretend to be. The collection was experimental, rebellious and playful and divided into four chapters: denim, utility, pop and artisanal.

The set was one of the best seen so far in Milan, it marked the expansive universe of Diesel with huge, inflatable blow ups, and was art directed by Niklas Bildstein Zaar, who also worked with Kanye West on Donda.

The 90s, and 90s denim in particular, are very relevant in current fashion. The distressed hoodies, quilted jackets, denim belts and bra tops show Martens has his finger firmly on the style pulse.