Glenn Martens to exit Diesel after spring 2027 show, stays at Margiela

Glenn Martens will exit Diesel following the brand's spring 2027 runway show, scheduled for 4pm CET on Tuesday, the opening day of Milan Fashion Week. The show closes his six-year run as creative director. OTB, the group that owns Diesel, said on Friday that a successor will be named in due course.

Martens will remain in the OTB Group's orbit. He stays on as creative director of Maison Margiela, the luxury fashion house founded by Belgian designer Martin Margiela in 1988, a role he has held alongside his Diesel post since it was created.

Diesel's founder Renzo Rosso, who started the denim label in 1978, credited Martens with reviving it. "Glenn Martens' contribution to Diesel has been extraordinary," Rosso said in a statement, adding that Martens forged "a strong connection with younger generations" while keeping the brand's openness and accessibility intact.

Rosso said Martens brought Diesel "back to the center of the global fashion conversation" and built "a solid foundation for its future", while preserving the qualities that have distinguished the label since its founding. He said OTB was "deeply grateful for everything he has achieved" over the six-year tenure.

How Martens built his Diesel run

Martens was appointed Diesel's creative director in 2020, though Rosso had tracked him for years before that. Rosso first brought Martens in as a guest designer on Diesel's experimental Red Tag capsule series in 2018, a year after Martens won the ANDAM fashion prize, which OTB has long sponsored.

His early Diesel collections leaned on the brand's early-2000s heyday, built around three pillars: denim in every form, utilitarian influences and pop aesthetics evoking MTV's peak years. Twisting, wrapping and textile manipulation, techniques he had honed at Y/Project, ran through his Diesel work as well.

More recently Martens shifted away from the pop prints and shrunken proportions that won over Gen-Z shoppers, moving toward longer hems and tailored silhouettes aimed at an older audience. His final show was teased on Instagram to his 367,000 followers and promised another provocative send-off.

His impact reached beyond the clothes themselves. Martens is credited with reviving Milan's fashion scene through inventive, democratic show formats, unconventional collaborations and bold advertising campaigns produced for the label during his tenure at Diesel.

Where Martens started

Martens grew up in Bruges and graduated from Antwerp's Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2008. Jean Paul Gaultier recruited him as a junior designer for his women's pre-collection and G2 menswear label after seeing Martens' graduation show, launching his career in Paris.

Martens went on to found Y/Project, where his experimental, twisted constructions earned him a cult following before OTB brought him into its orbit. That reputation for inventive construction became the throughline connecting his Y/Project years to his work at both Diesel and Maison Margiela.

Diesel is one of several OTB Group labels alongside Maison Margiela, Marni, Jil Sander and Viktor & Rolf, giving Rosso a stable of brands across which designers such as Martens can move between creative posts. His focus now shifts entirely to Margiela within that same ownership structure.

OTB has not said whether Martens' successor will come from within the group's roster of labels or from outside it. The statement announcing his exit gave no timeline for the appointment beyond confirming that one is coming, leaving Diesel's creative direction open for now.

Gaultier, whom Martens has called a "true inventor", spotted him straight out of Antwerp and put him to work on womenswear pre-collections and the G2 menswear line, a formative posting years before Rosso ever approached him about Diesel.

Rosso's courtship of Martens ran in parallel with Martens' rise at Y/Project, where the cult following he built on twisted, wrapped constructions eventually made him a natural fit for the more mature, tailored direction Diesel has taken under him since.

Martens' exit leaves OTB managing a transition at one of its most closely watched labels just as the new season's shows get under way across Milan, with Maison Margiela now the sole focus of his creative attention going forward.

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Images: Diesel; Glenn Martens Arnaud Lajeunie/Courtesy of Diesel