Fashion let out a collective sigh when, in the middle of Milan Fashion Week, the news broke that Glenn Martens had canceled his Y/Project show. That a designer as well-known and influential as Martens is facing this kind of financial pressure confirms what we’ve all heard whispering: that the system doesn’t really work for independent brands. At a showroom appointment on the last day of Paris Fashion Week, Martens was remarkably candid. “Frankly, we had a cash flow problem,” he said. “During the men’s week we did the commercial showroom [in January], and we have indeed grown. But at some point you have to make a choice. It’s $450,000 for a show, or $450,000 for prepayment for production and making sure the collection gets to the sales floor on time.”
Martens’ choice of production and sales floor will obviously ultimately benefit his team and his brand, but many were disappointed not to see his sculptural Y/Project clothes in motion, with some posing for this lookbook instead . Everyone from his father to his stylist Ursini Gysi and his fellow designer, Lamine Badian Kouyaté of Xuly Bet, to Ye (formerly Kanye West) are pictured in the slideshow.
For the new collection, Martens thought of pleurants, the sculptures of mourners that adorned graves in the Middle Ages, an instinct prompted by a sudden personal loss. He also mentioned Umberto Eco’s medieval murder mystery The name of the rose. He placed his draped chops front and center, adding hoods to otherwise familiar garments like button-down shirts and fleece jackets, or sheer panels behind a row of buttons that gave his clothes a sloppy asymmetrical shape. Some pieces included manipulable sections with Velcro that allowed the wearer to adjust their silhouette in the same way their bendable wire was used in the past. For example, a jacket can be turned into a cape, while a skirt with a picturesque floral print can completely change its shape. Other pieces were shrouded in sheer netting. The veiled pantsuit gave new meaning to the term fashion nun.
There were also unholy references in the form of bondage photo prints. Binding is a theme appearing this season in collections from Balenciaga to Alexander McQueen, but this kind of explicit imagery has been part of Martens’ vision for Y/Project for seasons. He pointed to a table of accessories and said with a laugh that an It bag could help him get back on the runway. The moldable thread he used for a small printed leather flap bag and a giant acid-wash denim bag here certainly guarantee this: his accessories look like no one else’s.
