“I have worked with Glenn for years, I have witnessed his talent, and I know what he is capable of,” said OTB chairman Renzo Rosso
It’s Martens at Martin. Glenn Martens is the new creative director of Maison Margiela, the company announced today.
“I have worked with Glenn for years, I have witnessed his talent, and I know what he is capable of,” said OTB chairman Renzo Rosso. “After Martin, who gave life to the Maison and its unique Artisanal line, and John, who made it the most cutting-edge couture house in the world, I am proud to have a third couturier at its helm. Glenn, who studied at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts like Martin, has already shown his prowess and his vision in couture”.
Glenn Martens said: “I feel extremely honoured to join the amazing Maison Margiela, a truly unique house that has been inspiring the world for decades. And I thank Renzo for the trust he is putting in me.”
The Belgian designer, who will remain creative director of Diesel, will replace John Galliano, who oversaw Margiela between 2014 and last year. Today’s appointment has been heavily speculated upon since Martens exited Y/Project in September 2024. He had spent 11 years at the independent Paris-based label, which has since shuttered. His commercial success at Diesel, allied with the irreverent wit and brilliance of his critically acclaimed work at Y/Project, justly made him the front-runner for the position to which he was confirmed today.
In a recent Vogue Business interview, OTB founder and chairman Renzo Rosso hinted that Martens would be a good fit for the cult luxury house. “Glenn is a couturier, not just a designer. Like John Galliano, couturiers have a different way of designing. Every single piece has a story to tell,” he said as rumours swirled about the company’s next chapter.
Photo: @Noorunisa
In the same article, Bruges-born Martens, 41, responded to the rumours about his future by confirming only that he was focused on raising chickens. That unconventional attitude (to fashion, not chickens) syncs finely with that of the house whose creative leadership Martens is about to assume. There are also some striking parallels between the career arcs of the house’s reclusive founder and that of its new creative director.
As well as sharing nationalities, both Martin Margiela and Glenn Martens graduated from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts: Margiela in 1979, Martens in 2008. Both men moved to Paris to further their careers, and both began working for Jean Paul Gaultier: Margiela in 1984 and Martens in 2008. This is where their paths — at least for a while — diverged. Margiela co-founded his eponymous brand in 1988. The next step of his eventual successor there, Martens, was to take the helm at Y/Project in 2013.
While Martens is an effusive, thoughtful and highly entertaining interlocutor when it comes to discussing the collections he and his teams have designed, Margiela famously avoided all publicity — declining even to take a bow after his house’s shows — after founding his house. Speaking in the 2019 documentary Martin Margiela: In His Own Words, he said: “Sometimes I regret that I had to make this decision to save myself because it’s difficult to make a name if you cannot put a face on it. Your collections need to be very forward. But I knew that I could give more if I felt protected.”
If Margiela’s anonymity fuelled his mystique, it was the collections and shows produced by his house that cemented his reputation - and inspired the adjective ‘Margelian’. His brand of democratic minimalism radically disrupted the excesses of the late 1980s fashion orthodoxy, and ushered a new form of modernism for the new decade. He recalled in that documentary: “First we were struggling that people could not understand us, but now I was suffering that people understood too well. I got depressed. The whole time it was about copies copies copies.”
Renzo Rosso’s OTB group acquired a majority stake in the house in 2002 and worked alongside the elusive founder until he announced he was stepping down in 2009. It remained collectively designed, with no nominated creative director, until the appointment of Galliano in 2014.
Martens was appointed at Diesel in 2020 and has since driven a turnaround at the label, also owned by Margiela parent company OTB — in 2023, Diesel sales grew 13 per cent. He has massively boosted the brand’s Gen Z customer base, with 16 to 25-year-olds now representing 36 per cent of sales. Martens has a keen eye for product, launching the bestselling 1DR bag and scaling Diesel’s womenswear, both key growth drivers in 2023.
While he’s proven his panache for brand-boosting, Martens has big shoes to fill. Galliano redefined Margiela for a new generation with his sporadic-but-impactful couture shows; most notably, Margiela Artisanal spring 2024, which Vogue’s Mark Guiducci hailed as “the John Galliano show my generation has been waiting for”. Following the show, Galliano “won the Met Gala”, dressing two of the world’s most influential stars: Kim Kardashian and Zendaya. As a halo effect, Margiela products like the split-toe Tabi have hit mainstream popularity in recent years, boosting sales at the label (sales growth hit 23 per cent). Diesel might be a more commercial player, but Martens proved his couture capabilities with his acclaimed Jean Paul Gaultier couture guest designer slot for SS22.
As Martens takes on this new challenge, perhaps the chickens will have to wait.