DIESEL - Fall 2024 - Runway Show Selection

Glenn Martens has never been one to hold back, especially at Diesel.

Last season, the Belgian designer held a free outdoor rave for 7,000 people to debut his Spring 2024 collection for the brand. The season before that, his runway featured a leaning tower of more than 200,000 Diesel-branded Durex condoms.

For Fall 2024, Martens took this fascination with putting it all out there much more literally, setting up an open-access live stream at not just the brand's HQ, but also the venue for its Milan Fashion Week show, so viewers could watch every single step of the process, from casting to fittings to rehearsal. If you were wondering whether people tuned in: On show day, the set had a projection of a live Zoom call feed in the background, with 1,000 participants who got a front-row (virtual) seat to the event.

This concept of transparency — or "our hidden sides breaking into the open, the inside coming out" — is mirrored within the Fall 2024 collection, according to the show notes. Diesel builds on its established distressed design language with dégradés and burn-out treatments (jersey shirts scorched with a sweat-like effect, button-downs so washed out the transparent layer underneath is visible, leopard print dresses that wear out to reveal floral prints). Of course, denim is ever-present, also transformed in various ways, be it to appear crackled or to look like leather."

Text by JANELLE SESSOMS, February 21, 2024. For Fashionista.com