Diesel: the record fashion show with "eyeless" models and 3 km of graffiti
Like Diesel, no one ever. This is what comes to mind for the lucky ones who cross the threshold of the Allianz Cloud in Milan to attend the show of the flagship brand of the Otb group. Here, the arena is transformed into the largest graffiti installation ever, with over three kilometers of graffitied fabric, created by a global street art collective made up of about 7,000 amateur artists and graffiti experts. When it comes to daring, after all, Renzo Rosso's brand certainly doesn't hold back.
“I love that thousands of people around the world worked together to create the scenography,” says Glenn Martens, Diesel’s creative director. “We gave the global street art collective total creative freedom – everyone expressed themselves in their own way, in a project that took months to realize. This is the true democracy of Diesel.” The collection features all of Diesel’s language to the nth degree: denim, utility, pop, artisanal. In a play of contrasts between the flashy colors of the scenography and the monster inflatables, and the palette of the collection. Everything is mixed, and subverted, starting with the models, perfect ‘aliens’ with black and white contact lenses and a smile painted with a splash of paint. The effect is disruptive.
Each country organized unique activations to graffiti thousands of rolls of fabric. In India, local artists graffitied fabric in Diesel stores, inviting customers to participate. In China and Japan, students were invited to participate, while in South Africa, the graffiti took place as part of a day-long event, complete with DJ sets. The artists were given complete freedom to express themselves in their work. The resulting fabric completely covered the 3,200 square meter arena, which was then filled with Diesel’s record-breaking inflatable sculpture, shown for the first time at the spring summer 2023 exhibition. The sculpture, which holds the Guinness World Record for the largest inflatable ever created, is now entirely covered in graffiti.
Skirts and jacketsThe tailored cut is collarless, like a small bouclé jacket, worn with a small denim peplum that looks like a top for jeans, over jacquard trousers that look like worn-in jeans. The skirt, also bouclé, seems to be cut low and is held in place by an elasticated waistband. These impossibly low-waisted pieces are present throughout the show in skirts, trousers and jeans, sometimes with matching elastic, sometimes contrasting.
The worn effect in the weave is found in the cut of the garments, as in a small bandeau top worn with a beret over trousers, while the bouclé is printed on Lycra for the shirts and the elastic waist that holds up a low-waisted skirt in real bouclé. And again, the super-padded hooded jackets wrap like a shawl, the leather has been boiled to give jackets and shirts an extreme three-dimensionality, a trompe l'oeil body in rubber seems the exasperation of a cable-knit sweater.
Experimentation is everywhere, as with the jackets, bustiers and jeans in plasticized denim. Diesel's low-waisted bumster jeans stay in place thanks to adjustable inner underwear. They are so extreme that they are worn only with a chest-sized patch printed with a life-size image of a shirt, then crudely stuck to the body, as in the final exits, which trigger a long applause from those present, including Tony Effe and Ghali, the latter sitting in the front row with his faithful Rich Ciolino.
milanotoday
