There is a lot to see at fashion week. Blink (or scroll too fast) and you’ll miss the details: feathered bagsfuturistic sunglassesfork jewelry† Throughout the month, we’ll be spotlighting the things we’ve seen that surprised or delighted us.
MILAN — There was nothing subtle about the way Diesel sparked interest in his latest runway show, the first since bubbly Belgian designer Glenn Martens joined the company as creative director in October 2020.
It sent invitations with an edible string made of red and white sweets† It lit up the skies in Japan, South Africa, Sweden and many more countries with drones forming the “D” logo.
So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to guests walking into the Milan show space on Wednesday that the first thing they saw was a giant inflatable woman, lying on her stomach with her head on her hands and her behind raised high in the air. (This reporter, along with other members of the American media, ended up sitting right in front of her denim-clad derriere.)
Diesel was clearly growing. tasteless. Showy. Cheeky. And that was the point. mr. Martens, also the designer of the Y/Project label, has long embodies avant-garde trashiness. Seeing him go to work at Diesel, the brand best known for its sexy 90s jeans, was a breath of fresh air – if ‘fresh’ meant slightly soiled with weed smoke and expensive perfume.
But back to the inflatables, or sculptures, as Diesel called them. There were five, each modeled after real people, varying in size but about 25 feet high and 55 feet wide.
The sculptures were based on 3D scans of the people, which were then reworked into 2D motifs.
The goal was realism in the corners and chamfers of the bouncy castles, but with distortion and accentuation in certain curves. For example, an inflatable boat without a goatee would kneel with its legs spread wide and hands flat on the ground, pouting slightly as its hips swung back. Diesel called these “confident, exuberant and proud poses”.
While the artist’s identity was not immediately apparent, the brand later made it clear that the sculptures were created by a team led by Mr. martens.
