Glenn Martens

Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud

In this episode of Fashion Neurosis, designer Glenn Martens discusses his creative journey and the intersection of personal identity with pr

Key takeaways

• Glenn Martens transitioned Diesel away from its controversial Mohican logo to foster a more inclusive brand identity.
• Under Martens' direction, Diesel increased its use of regenerative and organic cotton fibers from 3% to 57%.

Main topics

• Fashion Design Philosophy
• Brand Identity and Leadership

Notable quotes

You only get the real soul when it's really been worn under the burning sun.

Conclusion

A deeply moving exploration of how a designer's internal landscape and

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:01) I'm Ina Garten, and each week on Happy Hour, I invite old and new friends for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. On this week's episode, I'm joined by Andy Baraghani. We talk all about how he started his career as a teenager at Chez Panisse to becoming an internet heartthrob from his cooking videos to opening his first restaurant in New York City this fall. New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers. Speaker 7 (0:40) Hogging seats on a crowded train, not saying excuse me, watching videos on your phone with no headphones in. Sometimes it feels like we don't know how to act anymore. What we have been seeing increasingly is people breaking rules. Why should I play by the rules if nobody else is going to do that for me? This week on Explain It To Me, how to mind your manners. New episodes Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 3 (1:24) Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Glenn Martins. Thank Speaker 1 (1:29) you for having me. Speaker 3 (1:30) Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes? Speaker 1 (1:36) I mean, obviously the question I knew you would ask. But it started mainly with the idea that I stopped smoking a month and a half ago. And I think the reality is there really. I mean, you compensate. So you eat, you eat, you eat. And so I needed something to snuggle into, even if it's like 40 degrees in London and super hot. So that was the starting point I wouldn't go for. for the knitwear. And then the other thing is that I kind of mostly wear always, I mean, my friends would see me wearing this shirt like weekly. Would see me wearing the same pants weekly. I think I'm very much a uniform kind of guy. I like to wear clothes, constantly the same clothes when I like something. When I fall in love with a t-shirt or shirt, I just wear them every day of the week, daily. And until they kind of dissolve. on my body so that's kind of the one I'm wearing now is Speaker 3 (2:37) everything designed by you no Speaker 1 (2:39) no the jacket is um Margiela um and the the also the pants are Margiela from before me so from John the great thing is that those denims have a really nice rigid denim so it's uh I mean obviously at Diesel we have great denims also but there's mostly a bit of of comfort stretch and uh I like them more a bit more stiff. They live longer, they live better. And the shirt I bought in a second-hand store in 2008, when I recently just had moved to Paris with one of my Belgian buddies. I think we went to some second-hand stores. This is basically where I used to always shop. And it was amazing. It still is amazing because it's very, it's like sun-faded, but naturally. which is impossible to make. I mean, I've been trying to do this kind of sun fade techniques in every single company I've worked at. And you only get the real soul when it's really been worn under the burning sun, I think. And that's why I fell in love with it. And it was 20 euros, I think, in those days, which was a fortune. So that's obviously why I cherish it. And it's still in an okay, good state today. Speaker 3 (3:51) Yeah. I love wearing the same things. And someone mentioned the other day that everything looks good with holes in too, which hasn't, I always love my old sweaters with holes. But I hadn't thought about it so specifically and it was a good observation. Speaker 1 (4:11) It's so much better when there's a soul. I mean, like it's really... I mean, I think that's why I always went secondhand shopping. Of course, because it was cheaper in the beginning when I was a student, but I really love the idea that it has had a life. Yeah. Speaker 3 (4:27) I Speaker 1 (4:27) think that's also why denim is so sexy, actually. Speaker 3 (4:29) Yeah. I Speaker 1 (4:30) think a good denim, and especially a rigid denim, just gets better and better the more you wear it, the more memories it carries, the more holes it has, the more it is distressed. And I think that's why I love denim. Speaker 3 (4:43) Yeah. I wore this denim shirt especially for you. It's new and it's rigid. And you're a hugely respected fashion designer who's famous in the industry. And you're the creative director of both Maison Margiela and Diesel, designing some of the most exciting fashion. Speaker 3 (5:09) Do you adjust your identity in any way when you're switching from one house to the other? Speaker 1 (5:18) Good question. I do adjust. I used to, let's say like that. I think I used to have a diesel uniform. When I arrived in the company, I really had like, there was a bit of a friction also at diesel because it was a company which had had quite a long series of different CEOs. So there was a lot of people in the company who had arrived there according to a different strategy. Speaker 1 (5:45) When I started five years ago, I of course did one-to-ones with all my heads off and all my head designers and I asked them what is diesel for them. And every single one of them had a very different opinion about the brands because they were hired at a different moment under a different direction. And I was like, okay, this is going to be the biggest challenge. The number one is we have to make all those people speak the same language again. And I thought having a uniform was very helpful. because I became just a neutral person. So I bought this kind of black cargo pants and black cargo shirt, and I was just wearing this. I had like triples of them, actually. Utility wear, which felt very close to diesel. And then I wore this for the first six months until my first collection came out, and that was just black denim shirt, black denim pants. And it very much helped, yeah, just like making people not focus too much on... how I look like and just focus on... I was really neutral, let's say. I helped being neutral. And then at Margiela, obviously, I mean, the greatest gift that Martin could ever have given us is the blouse blanche. It's like this white lab coat that we all wear in the office. So I also kind of disappear, which is quite great. So I think... I mean, look-wise, I definitely am quite similar, I would say, now. And personality-wise, I think the same, too. I mean, they both belong to OTB, and I think they both do have a similar approach somewhere, somehow, in the way that they're very independent. It's a very individual brand, and there's not that many, neither in the luxury world. I think Maison Margiela is so different than the other ones. There's no need to... I mean, they have that link. They have that link. And Diesel also is a lifestyle brand. She's talking to so many different customers in so many different ways that there's no real competition. So we're all very free spirits, people in there. So I kind of got lost maybe. That's incredibly interesting. I love keep on going, keep on going. I love the Speaker 3 (7:59) idea that a different outfit will just shift you slightly into a different kind of... Speaker 3 (8:06) receptiveness to the needs of that brand and something that subtle. Speaker 1 (8:14) Yeah, but I mean, I think we, clothing does really have a very big influence on how you've been perceived. That's kind of the whole key of it, no? Yeah. And I mean, I've played that game quite, I mean, I have to play that game also quite intensively. So, voilà. Speaker 3 (8:34) And you said your mother didn't easily hand out compliments, but she would always praise your emotional intelligence. And that was one of the only compliments that she'd give you. And how do you deal with compliments? And are you able to give them or receive them? Speaker 1 (8:52) I think I'm very pragmatic. I'm not the biggest. I mean, I'm a very group worker, let's say. I think I'm always asking people's opinions. And I think even though I'm very directional, I include people. So it's not going to be this dominant kind of creator-director dictating what's going to happen. Speaker 1 (9:14) But it's true that I will say thank you a lot. But I'm not the biggest compliment giver. It's true that maybe it's part of my education that we were not complimented. And I think that's probably also the reason why I made it so far in my life. Because I think I never got so much confirmation from home. I think it was never something that people would say. My dad still today. is of course very very proud of me but I mean I'm not sure he really... I mean, I wonder when the last time was. I mean, he's very proud, but it's not verbally very well dictated or he's not going to give it. So I guess I do the same thing. I should maybe do it more often. But I think people do know that I love working together. I mean, both at Diesel and at Magella, it's Speaker 3 (10:06) a Speaker 1 (10:06) family feeling. And I think they really know that I respect them and I'm really invested 100%. Speaker 1 (10:15) and the work that we do together. So I think they get rewards in a different way. Speaker 3 (10:22) Yeah. It's such an interesting thing. Someone once asked me what was the best compliment I'd received, and I thought, gosh, that's such a good question. And I remembered it, too, when I was 20 or something. Somebody said I was wearing this suit, one of the first things I'd ever made. Maybe I was not. And he said, oh, you look like a manet. And I thought, wow, that's amazing. But my mother never paid me any compliments. But Speaker 1 (10:52) I Speaker 3 (10:53) love paying compliments. You Speaker 1 (10:57) do? Speaker 3 (10:57) Yeah. And now I think you have to, I don't know how correct it is, you know, to comment on how wonderful someone's looks. So I have to keep it in. Speaker 3 (11:13) It's complicated. I would say that Speaker 1 (11:17) they look cute when they look cute, of course, people. Yeah, but it's strange. It's complimenting. It's true today, in 2026, it can turn around so fast. Speaker 3 (11:32) Because you described your mother as a very complicated woman and she took her own life in 2023. Did you ever imagine that she might do something like that? No, Speaker 1 (11:44) never really. I mean, she was very proud and very angry. So that didn't really fit into the system. I mean, she was a mother, a woman who, I mean, she was definitely a mother. She really loved us intensively. and a lioness type of mother. But at a certain point she gave love. I mean, any kind of way how to get attention would give for confirmation of being important. So it wasn't by giving compliments or by... Speaker 1 (12:18) giving love was actually by, I don't know why, but there was definitely some kind of something there, a problem. But aggression and fights and lies would actually, I think, make her feel very... Speaker 1 (12:39) Of course, there's a reality to it that is undeniable and we're all confronted to it. And many people decide to end their life because for multiple reasons. Speaker 3 (12:50) I Speaker 1 (12:50) mean, for many multiple reasons. The thing is, there's always the leftovers and the people who are the family and the children and the friends, Speaker 4 (12:56) which Speaker 1 (12:57) we all know are, of course, the ones dealing with the trauma. And you just... so often don't see it, that actually the person you're working, the person who's in front of you, is actually maybe going through one of the darkest moments of their life, or like an agony of pain, Speaker 3 (13:15) and Speaker 1 (13:16) have to keep on going. And I think that's something that, I mean, I lived intensively, obviously. My mother killed herself on the 7th of September, 2023. And that was literally seven days before, or maybe 10 days, something. before I had my Deezler show. And the Deezler show was an open rave to 7,000 people, open to public in Milan, where there was like, I don't know, 17 hours of rave. And I was there pretending having the best time and motivating the whole teams, the whole gang, of being like, this is great. And obviously nobody besides my CMO maybe and the CEO Speaker 4 (13:54) knew Speaker 1 (13:55) that I was going to the death of my mother. And literally then I had... After that rave, where I just faked the joy and happiness of life, I flew back to Belgium again to bury her. And she was very illegally shattered her ashes under a tree. And those ashes were like scruffled. My brother and me had to like kind of dig them in a bit as it was quite illegal in the dirt. And I went with her ashes back to Paris to have the Y Project show, the brand I used to work for, three days later. And I mean... And then the song of the Y Project Shove, the last Y Project Shove, was actually a funeral song. It was like linked to her. And I mean, and all of this happened with, of course, with a lot of, as a creative director, of course, I mean, you're not going to, the depth and the sadness that you're dealing with, you don't want to reflect that to that team of hundreds of people which are all there working since months and months on that one project and want to celebrate the group effort. And of course, all of this, I... I completely kept aside. And it just makes me a bit more, hopefully, more aware of tragedies. And I'm trying to be, maybe not complimenting people, but being soft and sweet and being understanding to people. And I think I definitely became a more soft person, even though I guess a lot of people would say I'm quite harsh. Speaker 1 (15:28) Life is hard. Speaker 3 (15:30) Yeah. No, I mean, it completely changes one, and especially of a parent somehow. It's the ultimate abandonment. Speaker 1 (15:45) Yeah, I mean, your mother is the, I don't know, for me at least, even though there was a lot of friction and a lot of... sadness in