.jpg?w=1920&resize=1920,1075&ssl=1 "H&M X Glenn Martens Is The Brand’s Coolest Designer Collab Yet")
H&M X Glenn Martens is the latest designer collaboration to be announced by the Swedish high-street stalwart – and after getting an exclusive first-look at the drop in the brand’s Oxford Street showroom yesterday, I can assure you it’s worth limbering up for.
If you’ve ever wondered what happens when the Creative Director of Maison Margiela and Diesel teams up with the most innovative name on the high-street, your pondering can finally come to an end.
Today, H&M announced a partnership with beloved Belgian designer Glenn Martens – and despite having long string of buzzy partnerships under their belt (with Magda Butrym, Rokh, Balmain, Mugler, Moschino, Simone Rocha and Maison Margiela – where Martens has just presented his debut ready-to-wear show as Creative Director), this is the coolest yet.
For the unacquainted, Martens began making moves in the fashion industry back in 2008, when he joined Jean Paul Gaultier as a junior designer. But he is perhaps best-known for his 11-year tenure at the now-discounted Y/Project. He was later appointed Creative Director at Diesel, and has since taken on the aforementioned role of Creative Director at Maison Margiela – but it’s his time at Y/Project which seems to have influenced the Martens X H&M collection the most.
Martens went back through all of his old drawings and designs from his time at Y/Project at the dawn of this partnership around 18 months ago, H&M’s Showroom Manager tells me – rather than stowing them away for a rainy day. His work at Project/Y was all about celebrating individualism and youth – where pieces bent familiar forms into something smart, subversive, and quietly rebellious.
Of course, celebrating youth is one thing – but most Gen-Z members of the fashion set can’t afford designer fashion. Hence Marten’s eagerness to take advantage of H&M’s democracy and price point.
It wasn’t just his own Project/Y backlog Martens trawled through in the creation of this collection. The deeply researched-process saw Martens explore H&M’s archive to select a range of key pieces that consumers already adore, too. Think: best-selling t-shirts cuts to checked shirts, high-waisted jeans, denim dresses and bomber jackets. In his upcoming collection of unisex pieces, womenswear, menswear and jewellery, each pleasingly-affordable and Gen-Z piece has been reimagined as an extraordinary newly-designed item. And each play with trompe-l’œil and customisation.
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Many of the pieces in Marten’s collection be transformed by the wearer thanks to the use of reshaping techniques such as foil and wiring. Take the hero blue and white striped shirt, for example. The collar has been fitted with flexible wiring to allow the wearer to twist and lift into endless sculptural forms. Or the flannel shirt. The front on the shirt is set atop a foil panel, creating a paper-like scrunch effect – and the ability to cinch a waist.
“I see this collection as a big family of garments, all of which have multiple purposes and personalities: like people, they grow and change each day. I am always interested in the clothes that we really live in, and the idea of archetypes and wardrobe staples was the starting point for this very special and joyful project with H&M,” says Martens.
“I truly think this is one of the most creative collaborations we have ever done,” H&M’s Ann-Sofie Johansson added. “Glenn is such a talent and a radical thinker, and these are exceptional designs that play with archetypes and the very essence of what it means to get dressed each day. The campaign is so special – already iconic.”
I haven’t actually got to the best part yet. The campaign. Playing on the fact that humour is such a central part of Martens’s work – and he wanted the drop to embrace wit and self-expression – Marten’s campaign presents a twist on the royal family portrait, featuring Joanna Lumley and Richard E. Grant as the matriarch and patriarch of an anarchic/parodic multiverse reflection of said royal family.
