Milan, September 22, 2026. Glenn Martens' goodbye to Diesel wasn't a quiet bow at the end of the runway. It was a club night. For his final collection as creative director, Spring Summer 2027, Martens built a purpose-made club inside the venue, filled it with 200 performers, and closed the show to a reworked Donna Summer classic. If you're going to leave, you might as well leave like this.
"The party always comes first at Diesel," Martens said in his show notes, calling the collection "the essence of Diesel: disruptive, sexy, fluid, fun." His sign-off line was even simpler: let's take a ride one more time.
The crowd was part of the show
The real curveball was in the audience. Marseille artist collective (LA)HORDE planted 200 performers among the guests, and they started interacting with people, and with each other, as soon as the show began. Some of it was subtle and easy to miss. Some of it was impossible to ignore, anywhere from odd and unsettling to openly sensual.
It was all choreographed but built to feel spontaneous, a "happening" with rules where surprise was the point. The tension built through the show and ended in what the brand describes as climax and release, set to a rework of "Love to Love You Baby." The soundtrack was by Senjan Jansen, who composed the original score.
Merged, cut away, faked out
The clothes followed the same logic of excess. Pieces were literally merged together: a waxed leather jacket layered over a topstitched blazer, over a ribbed knit fused with a tracksuit collar and shirt cuffs. Where one garment met another, the seam was marked by orchid-shaped cutouts. The same idea gave us the "pantasock," a pant-sock hybrid in leather and denim.
Cutaways ran through everything. Over-the-knee skirts looked prim from the front and were dramatically open at the back. Slim pants and tailored skirts dropped impossibly low at the waist, trimmed with orchid embroidery. Some T-shirts, sweatshirts and jersey dresses were cut away so much there was barely anything left.
Then there was the trompe l'oeil, a Martens favourite. Lightweight button-ups carried prints of tweed coats and heavy winter jackets. One print reproduced a raw-edged shearling coat from his first Diesel catwalk show. Micro denim shorts turned out to be transfer prints on jersey. Denim bombers were foil-printed, cracked, then printed to look like baseball or biker jackets.
The last stretch leaned into a morning-after mood: rucked-up T-shirts stitched into bra tops, bandeaus and sundresses, twisted sheer floral dresses, slip dresses, and shirts and tailoring tangled up in themselves. A top held in place by a belt nodded directly to the very first piece Martens showed at the brand.
It always comes back to denim
This is Diesel, so denim got the last word. Bootcut jeans got their kick from insets at the inner ankle. Straight-leg jeans were coated and lasered to pass as leather. Some jeans had ankle slits to sit over stilettos, and others came with a denim shirt attached, as if tied around the waist. The finale brought the tiniest denim shorts imaginable, which the brand pitched as the party's manifesto.
The closing look went to Ella Snyder, who also wore the opening look of Martens' debut Diesel collection. A neat bookend for a tenure that began when he was appointed in 2020, and that ran alongside his role at Maison Margiela from 2025.
Bags, shoes and the rest
The D-ONE bag came back in a huge range of textures and shades, its handles extending into multi-buckled straps. New this season are tongue-in-cheek leather charms shaped like everyday things: a sock that works as a pouch, a newspaper that doubles as a clutch. There's also a slouchy new LOCK-D bag, which uses the Double D motif, first seen in Diesel jewellery, as its clasp.
Shoes borrowed the D-ONE buckle for pumps, heeled mules, stretch boots and clogs, while the Double D shows up on loafers, slingbacks, closed-toe mules and kitten-heel clogs. Men got a Western streak with denim clogs and heeled boots.
Smaller news: a mini version of the D-RUSH metal-bracelet watch, new tonal shades for the transparent TRAN-D-SPARNT acetate eyewear, and, for the first time, Diesel lingerie, boned and embroidered with orchids. Orchids also covered the jewellery, from earrings and bracelets to body chains and clips. That's no accident: the orchid is the signature flower of Diesel's newest fragrance, Only Desire.
The team
Styling was by Ursina Gysi, hair by Tom Wright, and make-up by Inge Grognard for MAC Cosmetics. Studio Dennis Vanderbroeck handled concept design, (LA)HORDE directed the performance, and Establishment NY did the casting.
The takeaway is simple. Martens spent his Diesel years turning a denim brand into one of Milan's most talked-about shows, and he signed off by throwing a party and wearing all his greatest hits.
