After six years in the driver’s seat, Glenn Martens is all out of Diesel. The Italian denim brand announced today that next week’s show in Milan will be Martens’s final runway spin as Diesel’s creative director.
Martens was appointed to the position by Diesel’s founder, Renzo Rosso, in October 2020. Since then, he has worked to radically restructure the company both inside and out. OTB, the Rosso-founded group in which Diesel is a significant part, said the brand enjoyed its best performance in a decade in 2025.
“He has transformed the way the brand is perceived,” Rosso said of Martens in a statement today. “He brought Diesel back to the center of the global fashion conversation while preserving the openness, energy and accessibility that have always distinguished us. We are deeply grateful for everything he has achieved.”
Martens’s departure will allow him to dedicate all his energies to his Paris-based role as creative director of Maison Margiela, which is also part of Rosso’s OTB group. Martens was handed that gig in January 2025, following John Galliano’s departure, in part thanks to the energy and success of his work at Diesel.
“I am not only here for fashion,” Martens told L’Uomo Vogue before his first show in June 2021. He added: “Because Diesel is a social brand. And this is why I was so excited to come because I knew that we have something to do here that is about more than just making pretty fucking T-shirts!”
Martens certainly did more than that. His opening phase at the Breganze-based brand saw him work alongside Andrea Rosso to restructure Diesel’s sustainable practice and introduce new retail initiatives, including its denim ‘library’. But he also hit the ground running when it came to the runway, leaning into Diesel’s history of irreverence in its approach to brand image, as well as the larger audience that came with a cheaper price point.
Following that first show and its inflatable bodies set, Martens inflated the concept to bursting point: Spring 2023 saw him show his rapidly-established dialect of Diesel denim around four erotically coupled titanic inflatable human forms in front of an audience of nearly 5,000, many of whom were students and members of the public given free access.
In the seasons that followed, Martens pursued market penetration by building his runway with 200,000 boxes of Durex condoms, held a free rave in the rain for 7,000 people, live-streamed the Diesel Studio’s preparation for a show, highlighted Diesel’s regenerative practice by filling a cavernous showspace with Diesel denim waste offcuts, and sent six miles of white fabric swatches to art schools around the world to decorate another collection.
Last season’s show featured a convincingly walk-of-shame-inspired collection set amid a huge jumble of Diesel memorabilia drawn from its 48-year history.
In its statement today, Diesel said that it would reveal its future plan for the brand’s creative direction “in due course”. In the meantime, we will have one last Martens-era runway show to enjoy: expect a big one.