Glenn Martens Leaves Diesel With 200 Performers, a Donna Summer Moan-Along and Leather “Denim”

Glenn Martens’ last Diesel show was a make-out session with a runway attached. On Tuesday (Sept. 22) in Milan, models seated in the audience started kissing and canoodling in pairs, threes and bigger groups while loud moans filled the room, T2 reports, to the sound of Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby.”

Diesel called it a “series of performative interventions” by (LA)HORDE, the Marseille choreography collective, according to Dazed. About 200 of the collective’s performers were seated among the guests, Hypebae noted, and the show closed with them headbanging.

The collection is the essence of Diesel: disruptive, sexy, fluid, fun.

Glenn Martens, in the show notes, Dazed

The clothes played the same trick. Denim appeared to unravel and melt into leather and knitwear, per T2, and Dazed saw trousers cut from leather and lasered to look like jeans, plus trompe-l’oeil shearling on jackets and coats. Shorts shrank until the last look was a narrow strip of fabric. “Every season we try to do something unexpected,” Martens said backstage. “This one was a bit more … experimental.”

It was an exit as much as a party. Diesel announced on Sept. 18 that Martens would leave after the show. He joined in October 2020 as the label’s first creative director and put more focus on its signature jeans and red tags, The Zoe Report recalls. Dazed pegs his run to sex positivity, down to the 200,000 boxes of Durex condoms at his autumn 2023 show.

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Founder Renzo Rosso said Martens’ “contribution to Diesel has been extraordinary,” in a statement carried by FashionUnited. The house hasn’t said who follows him, only that the next chapter in its creative leadership “will be announced in due course.”

Martens isn’t going far: he remains creative director of Maison Margiela. Milan’s other handover came three days later, when Sunnei’s founders debuted at Moschino on a parking-garage roof.

Added to the High Grailed archive on October 11, 2026.