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Diesel flagship store in Knightsbridge, London; the store has really easy layout and the wall bays are divided by stories. The front threshold has the latest drop/high season part of the collection, at the back we can find the Denim Library, with a wide collection of trousers, shirts, jackets and coats part of the seasonless denim collection ideated by Glenn Martens.

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In this article, it is explained the strategy behind Renzo Rosso's choice of giving up is position in Diesel and leaving the Creative Director position to Belgian designer Glenn Martens: a creative young artist that collaborated already with Diesel with the Red Tag Project and has the chance to take back the brand to its golden time. Martens is combining items and cuts of the Diesel DNA with his aesthetic and perception of the brand, making it more relevant for younger consumers.

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In a first dual interview, OTB founder Renzo Rosso and designer Glenn Martens talk exclusively to Vogue Business on the future of Diesel.

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During their first-ever joint interview Renzo Rosso stresses, twice, that Glenn Martens' first live show as the creative director of Diesel - the role to which Rosso appointed him in October 2020 - left him in tears.

We are speaking immediately after that show in Milan this Wednesday, at which Rosso sat next to Julia Fox and where Martens 70-look collection majored on anarchically remixed denim staples, D-logo retro-futuristic handbags, mini-dresses, wrap-belts and accessories, and new mesh S Prototype sneakers in the first collection presented on the runway since he joined. Hyper-sized outerwear, skirts and pants in hand-crafted deadstock jersey and denim shared the radical volumes that Martens mastered in his years designing Y/Project, a volume that was reflected in the set's saucy 20-metre-high Diesel-girl inflatables.

"We are talking directly to the people shaping the culture of tomorrow," says Martens of Diesel's Gen Z target audience. "And, we do it really loud. We add a lot of volume. It's about owning life as much as you can."

Martens leans over to pat Rosso on the back as the brand's president and founder says: "This is a new Diesel - the Diesel of 2022 onwards. My Diesel was before, going back to 1978... today I was so happy that you cannot imagine, because I can see how Glenn brings the details and heritage from the last 40 years with a modernity and a nature of design in line with the new fashion and the new consumer... even with the same DNA, they are two different Diesels."

Alongside him, Martens partially demurs: "The attitude is the same though. It's about being straightforward, taking challenges, going hardcore and no bullshit. That's how I like to work. And, those fundamentals were already here at Diesel."

This first live Martens show is a key moment in Diesel's push to reposition itself as an "alternative luxury" brand, with sustainable denim at its core, a new fragrance, and a fresh push on accessories ranging from sneakers to sex toys. Just as Gap is aspiring to revive its cultural relevance by working with Kanye West, Diesel has bet on the less starry but fiercely gifted and highly productive Martens to catalyse a commercial renaissance. A revival of Diesel's fortunes will equip Rosso to take his holding company OTB Group to an IPO.

Rosso says: "The brand is still very brave, and today I say that we need go braver." He is emotional. "I tell you again that I cried today at the show, because I saw something that gives me incredible satisfaction for what has been done, while letting me see the future of this brand ahead for a very long time."

Not long ago Diesel's future seemed to Rosso far murkier. In March 2019 Diesel USA filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection - part of a process overseen by Rosso himself. "I worked personally very hard before Glenn came on board. I had left people ten years before, but people were asking me 'please, come back, Diesel needs you'. So, I cut 400 million of low distribution. I gave a new energy. I brought a fantastic creative director on board. And, we had new management, coming from the luxury business."

Last month Diesel announced the appointment of Eraldo Poletto, a veteran of Salvatore Ferragamo, Furla and Stuart Weitzman, as its new CEO for North America. He reports to global CEO Massimo Piombini, who came to Diesel from Balmain in December 2019.

Diesel's financial performance is always couched within that of the OTB Group, the privately held company through which Rosso owns his original denim disruptor alongside a more recently acquired tranche of luxury brands, including Maison Margiela, Marni, Viktor&Rolf and Jil Sander, as well as licensing specialist Staff International. Although OTB does not break down group figures by brand, Diesel is understood to represent over 50 per cent of OTB's turnover: for 2021 OTB reported that turnover was up 16.2 percent to €1.53 billion, generating a net profit of €142 million.

Martens' first products hit Diesel's network of 400 monobrand stores and 3,500 points of sale three months ago, and the new flagship opened in New York's Soho on 11 February will act as the first pure retail articulation of his Diesel. The designer said it was too early to comment on their performance. Martens describes Rosso as a "mentor" and jokes he turns to the founder for advice "when we can find him, because he is always moving". Does Rosso offer him unsolicited guidance? "He loves giving me input! Sometimes I am like 'no', and sometimes I am like 'yes' - it depends on the moment."

Chuckling, Rosso hails Martens "not a designer, but a couturier" - something the wider fashion world saw when Martens delivered his one-off collection "Gaultier Paris by Glenn Martens from Y/Project" in Paris this year. The first stage in Martens' mission to pivot Diesel into an "alternative luxury" player, however, was not to reshape its clothing, but to reshape the operational silhouette of the entire company. Under Martens the Diesel supply chain was adjusted to ensure sustainability goals - "with absolutely no bullshit" - were met. He designed the new permanent capsule named Denim Library, all certified, that represents 40 per cent of the denim's specialist denim offer, and which eventually will be offered in every store. UK prices run from £150 to £250 for jeans styles, running to £695 for a denim trench coat.

"Diesel is a global brand. We are talking very directly to people across the world from many different backgrounds - more different I think than most luxury brands talk too," Martens says. "It would be absurd as a businessman today to try and make millions off the back of people and have the world get worse. Diesel is the perfect platform for this because it has a tradition of breaking balls, being disruptive and being socially sustainable - which is one of the reasons I love this brand so much."

Alongside Martens' review of Diesel's environmental sustainability practice, the company engaged in an audit of its social sustainability practice, related to the working conditions of all its workforce and partners. "I want to say we are the best people in the world, but when we did the audit we discovered some things that were tough, wow, that were not nice to see. We discovered that we have to improve, and we are - for this I am proud of the way we are running our brand."

Of all OTB's luxury brands, Rosso says 95 per cent of its products are made in Italy. Of Diesel he adds that before the pandemic, products - positioned towards the mid-market high street consumer base where Diesel is positioned - were by his assessment 30 per cent Italian made: he estimates now that figure has risen to 45 per cent. These estimates are made, Rosso adds, with the caveat that he does not keep a laser eye on precise figures.

"We are the University of Denim," adds Martens. "We are saying what we produce is the best and most experimental denim in the world, that is sustainable and which causes no harm. And Italy is undeniably amongst the best manufacturers in the world.

Where then is Diesel heading? As the majority revenue generating member of his wider OTB group, Rosso reveals Diesel's central role in an ambition whose scale is almost as bold as those 20 metre-high denim-wearing inflatables. "In every single brand, and in Diesel, we have the possibility of becoming something much bigger. Those figures for 2021 presented a week ago were fantastic because they showed we have a 24 per cent Ebitda, which means we are becoming a serious company," Rosso says. "So, we are starting a process with important international people to see how we can become public for 2024. This is our goal. And the most important reason is transparency. I want it for all my managers and employees - so that they can be my partners. And also for the succession, for my family, this can be a better way to run this group." Asked where he would wish OTB to list - Milan, New York, or elsewhere - Rosso shrugs and says: "honestly, that's not my job."

Martens, meanwhile, is focused on his job. Shortly before the show, he was in South Africa shooting the campaign for the as-yet-unrevealed first Diesel fragrance of the Martens era. The name of the fragrance is yet to be confirmed, but its campaign and marketing will be centred not around a celebrity, but a cast of real Diesel consumers. He says initially he found it hard to communicate the rationale behind this vision to L'Oreal, Diesel's long-standing fragrance licence partner. "They get it now," he added.

Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
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Renzo Rosso and Glenn Martens turn up the volume on Diesel's "alternative luxury" strategy

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Sign up to our newsletter for a truly global perspective on the fashion industry In a first dual interview, OTB founder Renzo Rosso and designer Glenn Martens talk exclusively to Vogue Business on the future of Diesel. To receive the Vogue Business newsletter, sign up here .

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Diesel's CEO Massimo Piombini and Creative Director, after the popularity of sportswear during the pandemic, have decided to create the first sport capsule collection of the brand, specifically targeted to female consumer; this choice has been taken after data showed how the majority of the consumers of sportswear are female and the brand has not been relevant for this part of the population for a long time.

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The pieces are “loud” and “disruptive”, says Diesel CEO Massimo Piombini — true to Diesel’s brand DNA. Even the leggings are designed with denim print.

This is Diesel Sport, quietly launched last week, with a dedicated design team hired and overseen by Glenn Martens, the creative director behind Parisian brand Y/Project whose recent magical rethinking of the Italian denim brand in his two collections since joining in October 2020 have received rave reviews. Now comes the the unisex activewear line, planned to be a permanent fixture for Diesel, with new collections every season featuring performance items including track jackets, leggings, sports bras, bodysuits and hoodies, priced between £70 to £195. Don’t expect copycat Lululemon: rather archival Diesel codes such as colour-blocking and the ‘D’ logo seen on the recent runway show at Milan Fashion Week.

The goal for Piombini is to attract a completely new audience of 25- to 35-year-old women. “If you look at the athleisure market, it’s 70 to 75 per cent women,” he says. “So for us and Diesel Sport, it’s not just an opportunity to catch some market space in a very important moment for Diesel, but also to rebalance the percentage between men and women.” Right now, only 20 per cent of customers are female, he says.

With a brand turnaround now behind him, as well as the peak chaos of the pandemic, Piombini has fixed his focus on the sportswear market. However, Diesel is playing catchup in a crowded market as designer brands seep into streetwear, and sports giants including Nike and Adidas look to tap more women as customers. Piombini says the launch couldn’t have happened sooner. During the pandemic, “We were in the middle of a gigantic turnaround… We had completely repositioned and reorganised everything,” he says. Part of Renzo Rosso’s OTB Group, Diesel underwent a rebranding following its 2019 bankruptcy filing that saw it shed its lower-priced collections and underperforming stores. OTB, which also owns brands including Maison Margiela, Jil Sander and Marni, reported a return to pre-pandemic levels with €1.53 billion in revenue for 2021. OTB doesn’t break out sales for Diesel.

Photo: Diesel
Diesel Sport's first official collection launched on 3 May.

Diesel is now betting on a growing sector. The global activewear market has had a quick recovery, returning almost entirely to pre-pandemic sales in 2021, with consumers in China and the US fuelling the growth, according to McKinsey. The market is expected to increase 8 to 10 per cent a year until at least 2025, rising from €295 billion in 2021 to €395 billion in 2025. Diesel Sport will be an international effort, starting with the Japanese market, with the US and Europe to follow. The goal is to reach as many people around the world, Piombini says.

Branching into sportswear was a natural progression for Diesel, he says. “Diesel was always associated with something in the sports space,” he notes, citing Diesel’s experimental spin-off brand, 55DSL, which turned the brands deadstock, prototypes and samples into new streetwear and athleisure pieces.

Piombini, who joined the company nearly two and a half years ago, debuted Diesel’s new sneaker line last year and set out to create strong differentiation. The success other brands have experienced with their activewear lines during the pandemic, Piombini explains, indicated there was a strong opportunity for Diesel to branch into the sportswear and athleisure market too.

Japan was the first region to launch Diesel Sport and now the brand plans to open a new pop-up store in Japan's major shopping districts, Ginza, adding to Diesel's existing 100 direct-to-consumer stores.

“Japan is the second most important market in the world for us,” Piombini says, predicting that Diesel Sport’s top markets will be Japan closely followed by Europe. The brand will also recreate its Autumn/Winter 2022 show in Tokyo next month, adding some new looks that are tailored to the Japanese’s market and perception of the brand.

Tapping into the Chinese market is another key goal. “Shanghai is on our list as a city where we want to do something very, very big to promote the relaunch of the brand.”

Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.

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Diesel takes Glenn Martens heat to sportswear

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Diesel’s chief executive Massimo Piombini wants a slice of the activewear market. Diesel Sport will leverage cultural interest in creative director Martens with a growing category for women.

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Sustainability is now a key point in making sure a business is able to stay afloat. Luxury retailers like Selfridges and Harrods are looking for permanent solutions to the problems that the fashion industry causes and especially, with the rising of e-commerce during the pandemic, one of the main problems to look at is the return and how they are affecting the planet. As brick and mortar retailer are able to go back to direct contact with the customers, the online industry needs to find new sustainable and emerging designer to work with, that can maybe produce made to order and actually make a change.

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Established and emerging players are redesigning physical retail with sustainability in mind. We spotlight some of the game-changers.

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Luxury retail stores are getting a sustainable makeover. Linear over-consumption is out. Care, repair and community are in.

Selfridges is hosting a car boot sale this week; while Harrods recently brought repair and alterations services in-store. In Paris, Le BHV Marais is exploring childrenswear resale with its Kids O'Clock pop-up. In New York, performance outerwear brand Arc'teryx's new store gives a quarter of the space over to repairs, refurbishment and upcycling. "With the rise and ease of e-commerce, we have forgotten the benefits of the brick-and-mortar shopping experience in reducing waste by simply being able to try on an item, getting a proper fit from the start, or deciding an item isn't right and reducing waste generated from returns," explains Julie Gilhart, chief development officer at Tomorrow London. "Even with growth and adoption of virtual try-ons nothing compares to seeing how an item fits in-person."

In recent years, multi-brand retailers such as Rêve-En-Vert, Buy Me Once and Know The Origin have presented a strong case for sustainable e-commerce, curating collections based on social and environmental criteria, and allowing customers to filter products by recycled content, organic materials, or living wage guarantees for garment workers. However, there are some sustainability challenges that remain hard for e-commerce players to solve, namely the high rates of returns, delivery emissions and single-use plastic packaging. E-commerce is still only around one-fifth of total global retail sales, according to Emarketer, and the pace of growth is slowing after a Covid-19 uptick. The focus instead is turning to physical retail with brands reconsidering the products stocked, how they present them and, crucially, the impact this has on the amount people consume.

As well as reducing returns, physical retailers have an opportunity to promote sustainable practices and raise awareness of solutions. "As big brands switch to direct-to-consumer, there is an opportunity for retailers to differentiate and support young, sustainable designers," says Orsola de Castro, co-founder of non-profit Fashion Revolution. "One of the challenges online is that you have to think to look for it, but in-store, you can stumble across it," adds François Souchet, global head of sustainability and impact at consulting and communications agency BPCM.

Swapping linear consumption for circular services will be key, Souchet continues. "The first big challenge is to make sure sustainability is not used to create the illusion of guilt-free consumption, or use sustainable offerings to promote and sell more products." Instead, making sure products are used more is key.

Imagining the store of the future

Since launching its Project Earth campaign in 2020, Selfridges has been experimenting with alternative retail formats through its Corner Shop concept store, and has run a series of pop-ups and pilots with circular service providers including Vestiaire Collective and The Restory. Throughout April, the Corner Shop hosted over 20 brands which have now found permanent homes elsewhere on the shop floor: Adidas collaborator Parley for the Oceans installed a giant 3D printing machine to recycle ocean plastic into homeware, clothing and sunglasses; Iris van Herpen displayed exclusive laser-cut corset belts and made-to-order dresses crafted from recycled ocean plastic; and Air Company launched lab-grown diamonds made from carbon captured from the atmosphere.

"We're on a mission to make circular business models a core part of our offer," says Selfridges managing director Andrew Keith. "We are also exploring and establishing alternative models that allow us to reimagine the very act of shopping itself." So far, this has included rental, refills, resale, and repair, turning the shop floor into a space for ongoing education and engagements with loyal customers, sometimes over several years. The most notable services are its Resellfridges secondhand programme, and an in-store rental boutique from online fashion rental marketplace Hurr, both in prominent positions. The Corner Shop sits in the heart of the accessories hall, prime real estate that is visible from the entrance.

Slow consumption and more considered purchases are the intention of storytelling platform and e-commerce retailer Stories Behind Things via biannual pop-ups in London, where new products combine with peer-to-peer swap shops. Products are displayed with ample space and detailed descriptions of their sustainability credentials, more like a gallery than a store. "We're not here to push products, we're here to inspire our community to be curious about the things they're buying," says founder and CEO Jemma Finch.

Another retailer swapping products on plinths for immersive exhibitions is Fabrica X, the showroom and concept store of The Mills Fabrica and its 29 portfolio brands, including recycled material startup Evrnu and white label resale platform Reflaunt. Current installations include a body scanning machine for made-to-measure denim brand Unspun; an exhibition showing the process of turning raw flax into Flax London's seasonless linen jackets; and demonstrations of Petit Pli's expandable and adaptable childrenswear. LVMH deadstock fabric platform Nona Source will also have a space there from next week. "The way we sell encourages customer loyalty and a slower pace, because people have to wait for made-to-order products. That prompts a culture shift away from instant gratification, which is unsustainable," says The Mills Fabrica's sustainable brand curator Gabriele Verikaite.

Going forward, physical retail will be a key touchpoint to educate customers, says Cassie Quinn, founder of regenerative design lab CQ Studio, which is currently taking part in Westminster City Council's pop-up for emerging designers. Alongside a live material lab, CQ Studio is running workshops including bio-sequin embroidery and botanical dying.

Swapping linear retail for circularity

Physical retail is critical for businesses that are trying to change consumer behaviour, says Hurr founder Victoria Prew, adding that omnichannel has allowed Hurr to acquire older customers, who feel more comfortable with physical retail. As well as the Selfridges boutique, Hurr hosted a pop-up for six weeks over the 2021 holiday season, with 20 community events and a 24-hour rental trial. "We joke that the pop-up was a big changing room, and that's what we want," says Prew. "Trying on 40 dresses in-store is so much better than renting or buying 40 dresses online, only to return 39 of them."

Running pop-ups and permanent stores-within-stores with third-party service providers allows retailers to experiment without needing to manage logistics themselves. Luxury aftercare provider The Restory partners with Harvey Nichols, Browns Fashion and Farfetch, among others. Its 2021 Selfridges pop-up was nestled between Gucci and Hermès, a vote of confidence The Restory co-founder Emily Rea says prompted a 70 per cent spike in bookings. The Restory was also one of three companies featured in the recent circular fashion hub pop-up at Harrods. Rea says these partnerships drive 50 per cent of bookings, and are crucial to raising awareness, especially when they are in prominent positions in-store, with digital campaigns and email follow-ups after purchase to encourage care and repair.

"We need to shift away from focusing on linear sales and celebrate circular services in-store," says Rea. In a recent survey of 10,000 The Restory customers, 85 per cent of people said they would buy more from a brand offering aftercare, and 97 per cent said they would be more likely to invest in higher quality products if aftercare were easily available and cost-effective.

Performance outerwear brand Arc'teryx's first hybrid retail space in New York gives a significant space to repairs, refurbishment and upcycling. "We have always offered repairs in our warranty, but it's been exciting to bring that out of the basement and into the retail space," says VP of recommerce Dominique Showers. "We have been able to spend more time with customers, to help them become better stewards of their garments and educate them on durability. We have learnt a lot about how people use the garments, which has fed back into the upstream design, improving future products." Arc'teryx plans to open three further hybrid stores this year.

For vintage and secondhand items, which are often one-of-a-kind, physical retail can be more convenient for sellers. "With e-commerce, listing, measuring, describing and photographing each item can take up to an hour. With physical retail, you can put out hundreds of items per day," says Natalia Spotts, founder of New York's Gen Z favourite, Funny Pretty Nice. London-based vintage dealer Laura von Behr - who exclusively sells via one-on-one studio appointments - adds that customers are fatigued by endless hours or scrolling online, and experiential retail offers respite. Ganni recently opened its Postmodern store in Copenhagen, bringing resale to physical retail.

Others say it isn't a silver bullet. For Lone Design Club, which helps sustainable e-commerce brands enter physical retail with multi-brand pop-ups hosted from China to Italy and the UK, the materials needed to set up stores are the biggest outstanding challenge of physical retail. "With physical retail, we can avoid shipping and packaging, and we have just one per cent return rates, compared to the industry standard for e-commerce of 30 per cent, but we can't escape the impact of furniture and materials in setting up stores," says founder and CEO Rebecca Morter.

In Los Angeles, multi-brand newcomer Toward has committed to offsetting the carbon emissions for those who visit the store within 100 miles. Souchet suggests that retailers could also consider how most people travel to certain stores and incentivise more sustainable options, such as walking, cycling and public transport.

It's not enough to shoehorn sustainable products into a traditional physical store, says Souchet. "All that infrastructure, energy, heating and cooling of the building, lighting and all the elements that help provide a 'nice shopping experience' need to be sustainable too. Because they fall into Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, chances are a lot of retailers are already thinking about it.

Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.

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Physical retail is back. And this time it's sustainable

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Sign up to our newsletter for a truly global perspective on the fashion industry Established and emerging players are redesigning physical retail with sustainability in mind. We spotlight some of the game-changers. To become a Vogue Business Member and receive the Sustainability Edit newsletter, click here .

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After the pandemic and hard restrictions, retailers have decided to embrace this new found freedom and are creating full immersive experiences for their customer; what has changed from before the pandemic, is the whole experience that people want to feel when coming into a store, purchasing is not the only goal. With Covid and the closure of multiple stores globally, and being accessed to online retailers easy for the majority of the population, creating full immersive experiences in store is fundamental to create longevity and interest.

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Consumers need enticing back to physical retail. That's why luxury fashion brands are amping up touch and texture in the pop-ups for their latest handbags.

By Kati Chitrakorn, Vogue Business 4th May 2022.

Expect lots of splashy blue at Le Bleu, a fun pop-up that opened this week at London's Selfridges. Designer Simon Porte Jacquemus has reimagined his bathroom, no less, for a retail concept that overloads the senses to playful effect and replicates the sense of humour that ripples through Jacquemus's Instagram posts.

Jacquemus's previous pop-ups in Milan and Paris - one in white, the other in pink - both went viral on social media. Le Bleu, located in the Selfridges creative retail space, called The Corner Shop, features an edit of the Spring/Summer 2022 Le Splash collection shown in Hawaii in March alongside a selection of exclusive hoodies, T-shirts and towels and the brand's Marseille je t'aime photography book.

Jacquemus has also occupied Selfridges Mews, located directly behind the Oxford Street store, positioning there its 24-hour vending machine that dispenses colourways of its top-selling Chiquiot and Bambino bags. There's more Jacquemus nearby at the Old Selfridges Hotel: Le Vestiaire is the title of an immersive experience that transports customers through a surrealist interpretation of a swimming pool and rooms with 3D sensory experiences.

Jacquemus is among many brands exploring the potential of what have been called hyperphysical stores. The term was coined by The Future Laboratory, a trends and strategy company, to describe retail spaces that are enriching and emotional. They "create a really sensorial and holistically memorable store experience that goes beyond the original idea of retail," says Abi Buller, foresight analyst at The Future Laboratory.

Hyperphysical attracts the young

Balenciaga has also taken the hyperphysical route. Last week, the brand opened pop-ups for the Le Cagole it-handbag (worn by Kim Kardashian in the brand's most recent campaign) in both London and Bangkok. The stores feature a joyous surfeit of shaggy pink faux fur that covers floor, walls, chairs and shelves.

Also of note: Coach's larger-than-life installation in central London this April, which was inspired by the puffy pillowy leather of its latest Pillow Tabby bag (the installation is travelling to Berlin and then Dubai in May). And Mulberry is currently hosting a pop-up in Seoul to promote its new bag Softie. The space mimics the bag's sensorial qualities - curved quilting that looks plush and squishy - with spongy furniture and decor that invites visitors to touch.

For Jacquemus, meanwhile, a spark of hyperphysical retail energises the brand's presence in the UK market, which, Simon Porte Jacquemus tells Vogue Business, is very important for the brand. "[It's why] we created several experiences at Selfridges. We wanted to create strong visuals and surprising settings for our customers," he says. "I love to play with concepts, especially those that relate to buying and retail experience. With the opening of Jacquemus 24/24 in Paris, Milan and now London, I hope to disrupt and create a unique Jacquemus experience."

"Hyperphysical retail at its simplest is multisensory. It leans into the five senses of sight, sound, touch and potentially even smell and taste. That essentially captures what it means to be human," says Jacqueline Windsor, UK retail leader at PwC and a partner in the Strategy& Deals team. "These pop-ups are a manifestation of that and are in response to the other side of the coin, which is digital and the rise of the metaverse, a parallel universe where consumers can increasingly socialise, work, shop and play."

At a time when many consumers haven't fully returned to real-life shopping, hyperphysical retail serves as a draw for younger consumers. Some 56 per cent of global Gen Z shoppers head to physical stores for a fun experience, according to a 2018 survey by IBM and the National Retail Federation, which interviewed 15,600 global consumers between the ages of 13 and 21.

Retail foot traffic in the UK has been climbing slowly since last November, with a 1.2 per cent increase in February. That's still not above pre-pandemic levels, according to the British Retail Consortium. Its most recent data for March shows average monthly foot traffic is down 15.4 per cent on the same month in 2019. Elsewhere, Europe has experienced an even more sluggish return to retail: in March, Germany's monthly traffic fell by 38 per cent on 2019, France's traffic dropped 26 per cent, and Italy's was down 39 per cent.

No one expects a quick uptick, least of all in the UK. "Retailers are facing significant challenges as consumer confidence fell to its lowest levels since 2008. Consumers are now feeling the effects of rising living costs, increased food and fuel prices, and have been experiencing higher energy prices since 1 April," says the British Retail Consortium's chief executive Helen Dickinson. "As belts continue to tighten and prices continue to rise, it will be a difficult road ahead."

While e-commerce is accelerating to offer multi-layered experiences for customers and brands, bricks-and-mortar stores are becoming physical bastions of extraordinary, sensorial moments. Some luxury marketers see an opportunity to add ASMR triggers to physical experiences. ASMR, which stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, refers to the gentle, relaxing sensations that many people feel (often starting in the scalp) in response to texture, light, movement, sound and smell. Once a niche subculture, in recent years ASMR has been popularised through YouTube and TikTok, where top ASMR accounts can rack up hundreds of thousands of views.

ASMR in physical retail adds an appealing element for experience-focused consumers, says Buller. "We haven't been able to physically touch and interact with things for a while. It is a great way to make people excited again and want them to be in a space."

Retail as experience and engagement

Sales don't necessarily drive these sensorial pop-ups. "It's not just about buying," commented Jacquemus on his Instagram story. "It's also an experience, a concept. The idea is to break the frontiers in the world of luxury. We want you to come in feeling welcome and have a great experience no matter what you do inside. You can also just walk in and take a picture. This is Jacquemus."

"Brands are forced to rethink not just the format, location and permanence of their stores but it also begs the question of how to measure their value when you can no longer use sales as a single success metric. It requires brands to look at the full equation," says PwC's Windsor.

Other brands take this concept a step further by carrying no merchandise, preferring to focus on community engagement and inviting visitors simply to enjoy the experience. In 2021, Bottega Veneta staged a playful maze installation in Seoul that offered a unique interactive encounter with the brand.

For Coach, the goal of its physical pillow tabby experience this April "was to deliver a unique and memorable experience through sensory stimulation, engaging visitors with the brand through a distinctive and playful lens", says Amber Pepper, vice president of marketing, communications and commerce for Tapestry EMEA. The inventory-free space was also "designed to drive further brand heat and momentum" in the offline space, following the success of the Pillow Tabby handbag on TikTok, she explains.

A video from user Daily Fashion Finds calls the pale pink tabby model "the bag of the year" - it's raked in more than half a million views and 33,500 likes since mid-March. However, some experiences can't quite be replicated online, Pepper believes. "We created an immersive, cultural experience that fostered community and met consumers' emotional need for connection, togetherness and light-hearted fun."

The impact of sales has still been meaningful. Sales of the pillow tabby rose 140 per cent and footfall in stores was up 40 per cent during the opening weekend of the pop-up, says Pepper.

The connection with the consumer can be very powerful. "It's very much about how the space makes you feel and how memories can be created there. Physical retail can bring so much to the customer that then the transaction will follow," observes The Future Laboratory's Buller. "Online shopping, social commerce, live-stream selling and all of those things have their place. But, in a physical space it's about simulating interest, which may encourage people to make a transaction digitally or elsewhere."

While pop-ups generate short-term traction, bigger long-term opportunities may be out there, such as turning retail stores into spaces with benefits, adds Buller. A high-profile example? She cites Dior's new flagship in Paris where visitors can eat, sleep, wear and work out. "The idea is to position retail not as just shops but as venues," says Buller.

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From Jacquemus to Balenciaga: Luxury fashion brands go hyperphysical.

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Consumers need enticing back to physical retail. That's why luxury fashion brands are amping up touch and texture in the pop-ups for their latest handbags.

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This article explores the shift of customer behaviour after the pandemic. What is interesting to see is how the younger generations, Gen Z in particular, are the major buyers of luxury items; their approach to fashion is "buy to invest" has been major in the luxury market, driving sales up the roof.
Businesses need to focus their strategies on these consumers, with a key interest in sustainability and circular economy.

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In this article I have found interest materials that could be a turning point for my range; an interesting one that I think would work perfectly for my range and eventually for Diesel is the collagen based material, an alternative to animal leather, that recreates the same touch-feeling as leather but instead created in a lab (invention of Modern Meadow )

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Available at: https://www.wgsn.com/fashion/article/93609
in this article I have came across new innovative materials, like hemp fiber that mixed with BCI cotton can produce a more sustainable kind of denim, with more property such as UV resistance or breathability.

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Massimo Piombini, CEO since 2019, created a new strategy to get the brand back to its position as a leading pioneering company in the fashion industry; his "Sunshine Project" focuses on 4 categories of customers and their personal style. What Piombini aims to do in collaboration with Glenn Martens (Creative Director) is to remodel the whole collection, cut out extra categories and product selection so to aim specifically to these groups of customers and to increase profitability.

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With a new chief executive-creative director duo at the helm, Diesel is forging ahead with founder Renzo Rosso taking a big step back. CEO Massimo Piombini details the brand's updated strategy.

When Massimo Piombini visited Diesel's Italian sneaker factory in June, five months after becoming chief executive, he faced an immediate dilemma. "I didn't like the collection. I didn't like the strategy behind it. I didn't like anything," says Piombini, who had left his Paris-based job as CEO of Balmain to join the Italian denim brand.

His challenge was to confront his new boss, Diesel founder Renzo Rosso, who often calls the brand his "baby" and at the time led creative direction at the label he founded in 1978. In Rosso's office that afternoon, 59-year-old Piombini says he proposed that Diesel build a new dedicated sneaker business, hiring fresh designers, merchandisers and suppliers.

It was the middle of the global pandemic. Diesel's revenues were headed for a 22 per cent slide this year from $900 million in 2019, capital spending had been halted, stores shuttered, employees laid off and furloughed, and executives - including Piombini - had taken 20 per cent pay cuts.

Rosso listened, Piombini says, and replied, "Okay. Go ahead."

Rosso, who is 65, for three years had been on a mission to recreate the energy that defined Diesel in the 1980s and 1990s. Built with a rock-and-roll vibe and provocative often surreal advertising - campaigns have portrayed imaginary life in North Korea, imitated car crashes and showed same-sex couples kissing decades before it was normalised - Diesel saw its edge and its profits decline in the naughts as it sought a mass market by lowering prices, producing more mundane designs and aggressively expanding retail outlets. In recent years, it has emerged from bankruptcy protection in the US while Rosso stepped back in to oversee operations after spending years investing in luxury brands such as Maison Margiela, Viktor & Rolf and Marni through his holding company, Only the Brave Group, which is based in Breganze, a small town an hour west of Venice.

When the pandemic hit, the label had just begun a turnaround with a series of capsule collections with designers such as A-Cold-Wall's Samuel Ross. Store traffic was up 7 per cent last fall. Rosso hired Piombini in December last year to "bring back to Diesel what it was in the 80s and 90s", says Piombini.

One big step for Piombini was hiring 37-year-old Belgian designer Glenn Martens, known for his avant-garde denim designs for Paris-based Y/Project in October. Martens is working on a Diesel capsule collection that will drop in March. His first full collection for Diesel will come for Spring/Summer 2022 and it will include new more elevated and expensive designs. While Martens is under orders to focus on products, Piombini is installing a new infrastructure to support them.

The plan melds an increased focus on e-commerce, which has been the one bright spot in 2020 with Diesel's e-commerce sales - which rose 40 per cent year-over-year in the second and third quarters - and a new system of roughly 10 brand hubs around the world. Piombini sees those physical hubs playing the role of community magnets, with local teams offering entertainment and activities. Travelling Diesel studios will create films and other content that will be served up to those local communities. In addition to the obvious fashion cities of Milan, New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo, there's Tel Aviv, Berlin, Bogota and São Paulo.

The pandemic quickly reversed the progress just as Piombini moved back to his hometown of Milan and began a weekly two-hour commute to Breganze. Beyond the necessary cutbacks, Piombini thought he saw deeper problems with how Diesel was trying to communicate with consumers. Advertising has been superseded by technology, social media and a society-wide desire for authenticity. Reaching today's consumers requires entertaining them rather than pitching them, he felt. What followed swiftly became a repositioning of the brand that's intended to recalibrate its carefree sensibility for a culture that is vastly different than the one in which Diesel emerged, when designer denim was a new concept. The aim is to be both local and digital, attuned to the cultural tastes and technology of the third decade of the 2000s as well as the complex world that consumers live in with multiple choices on how to spend their time and money.

"We want to have a physical presence and a cultural presence," says Piombini. "My competitors aren't Levi's or Balenciaga. My competitors are the gym, Netflix. Diesel has to be a part of your life."

The stage for this attempted comeback is not the friendly one Diesel took 40 years ago. "The market is really crowded, and before they had a new different proposition," says Mario Ortelli, managing partner of merger and acquisition and strategic advisory firm Ortelli & Co. "Nowadays, there are many denim brands and the competition is by far higher."

Success, Ortelli says, means becoming one of a handful of top-of-mind brands. "You win or you lose. Now it's more binary, the math."

The new Diesel

When Piombini arrived at Diesel in January, he sat down with about 20 employees individually and asked them to tell him about Diesel. "Every story was different," he says. This led him to feel that the brand's mission was unclear, even internally. He hired the Los Angeles-based branding and entertainment firm The Sunshine Company to work on a new playbook, which he calls Project Sunshine.

The work included interviewing 10,000 consumers in the US, Europe, China, Japan and elsewhere, asking questions such as how they viewed Diesel, and who they saw as its rivals. The group derived, over six weeks, four archetypical customers that Piombini is calling the Gang of Four. These archetypes run the gambit from trend-hungry teens to middle-aged men and women who long ago established their personal style and seek designs with longevity. The groups are only for internal use at Diesel, intended to make employees aware of the "tribe audience" they are to keep top of mind - those who love high design; experimenters; "settled" who value function over trend; and individualists who value their own style above all.

Every employee at Diesel now has elements of this playbook at their desk, and Piombini expects them to know how their job relates to the Gang of Four and Project Sunshine. Employees are expected to be familiar with slogans and brand concepts, such as "denim is the social fabric of the world", and to act with "brave behaviours" such as "stay curious", "take chances", and "get connected".

"The onboarding of this idea will take time," says Piombini, acknowledging that the shifts require extensive relearning for Diesel employees. "This is a cultural revolution for this company."

The Covid-19 pandemic led Diesel, like many companies, to rapidly implement digital operations that might otherwise have taken years. With eight showrooms shut down around the world, Piombini hired a New York virtual reality startup, Obsess, to build a digital showroom, called Hyperoom, that allows store buyers to move through the brand's Milan showroom much like Google Street View. Users click on arrows to move and can click a button to segue into the order placement system. Diesel is now completing a mobile version that will work on store buyers' phones and iPads.

This is a new approach for Piombini, who has spent his career as a luxury executive working at Balmain, Valentino, Gucci and Bulgari. He says he didn't bring a single former colleague along to Diesel, and he says he has no intention of lifting the denim label into the luxury tier. "It's not in the DNA of the brand," he says.

Still, he brings luxury experience to Diesel, including the special relationship between brand and price, which in luxury has little to do with cost of production.

"When you think a brand is expensive, it's because your perception of the brand is wrong," he says. "When your perception is right, there is no price resistance. Suddenly paying €250 for a pair of jeans, you think you got a good deal."

Piombini's past with corporate-owned brands didn't quite prepare him for working with a passionate founder accustomed to involving himself in every aspect of the brand. "It's my daily challenge," he says with a wry smile on a Zoom call. "When I joined, Renzo was the creative director of the brand - according to him. He didn't have that title on his business card."

Rosso says he sees his role as encouraging and protecting talent, and that bringing Piombini and Martens on frees him up for other endeavours at Only The Brave.

"Today more than ever, I am busy on countless fronts, and the time has come for Diesel to have a full-time figure guiding and directing all the expressions of the brand's lifestyle, from style to interior design to marketing, with modernity and new energy," Rosso said in an email. "It is not difficult for me, emotionally. Diesel is and will always be my creation, Glenn will be free to forge his way, and I will be by his side to ensure the fundamental values and DNA of the brand are protected and enhanced."

Piombini says it was Rosso's idea to bring in a creative director. Rosso has been turning more responsibility at Only The Brave to his children and said last year that he is ready to share more control. With other brands owned by his privately held Only The Brave Group, he is often remarkably hands-off and willing to take risks on personalities. Rosso hired John Galliano to design Maison Margiela in 2014, when much of the fashion industry was shunning the designer following his anti-semitic tirades and a conviction in France for making racist remarks. Rosso has also proved to be loyal, often giving years to designers to find their stride.

Piombini is banking on Rosso's agility - moves like agreeing to develop a new sneaker business in one afternoon. "The big groups are sometimes a little slow in their decision making," he says. "We are very fast. My boss is on the other side of the building."

He can't say how much this new strategic and capital plan will cost Diesel - they haven't quite figured that out yet, he says. But he is proceeding with one eye on a pandemic that is likely to be a scourge on business for another year. Piombini isn't banking on a return to pre-Covid-19 business performance until 2022, which he predicts will perform at 2019 levels. "If the vaccines really work and are distributed around the world, maybe these numbers can be accelerated," he says.

He has found a location in Shanghai for the first Diesel hub, but is finding it difficult to look for the other locations without being able to travel.

"Doing all this from my office is really frustrating," Piombini says. "It's like you have a car and it's started with the key in the ignition, but you cannot go."

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More from this author: Can farm-to-closet work for fashion? Fashion's US election elation on Biden Post-election, Covid relief will be US fashion's top priority

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With a new chief executive-creative director duo at the helm, Diesel is forging ahead with founder Renzo Rosso taking a big step back. CEO Massimo Piombini details the brand's updated strategy.

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Fall 22 collection is the epitome of Y2 aesthetic and innovative approach to fashion using such an everyday fabric as denim; with this collection, Martens wants to show Diesel's audience how it is possible to create bespoke pieces using overstock and producing it closer to home.

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Skip to main content

Anyone who checked out Glenn Martens's personal Instagram the day before his Diesel show (last year Martens was made creative director of the Italian jeans brand that has pretty much ripped up the denim rule book since forever) would have seen he had posted a video of a pulsating red object in the Milanese night sky. Given everything that's going on these days, I doubt many of us would blink an eye at a visit from extraterrestrials-heck, we might even welcome them with open arms. Except, that was no UFO, but the Diesel logo rendered special effect style, flickering and burning up the evening, a moment of imagination in an otherwise humdrum world, with cars zipping back and forth on the highway under this eerie spectral form.

That gets us to the perfect-well, kind of-segue way to what Martens (who still creatively directs Y/Project to much and rightful fanfare) has been charged with doing at Diesel, which is: Make something magical and fantastic out of that most democratic and utilitarian of fabrications, AKA denim, for the everyday world. On the strength of the two collections he has done thus far, he has achieved it, and how. Yet with this fall 2022 collection we're getting the real measure of Martens's big ambitions for the brand.

Big, quite literally: Those enormous, floor-sweeping denim 'fur' coats of his were made by the company's artisans at a level of technique you'd usually find in a couture house, just one of the wildly experimental forays he made here which looked terrific. The upcycled layered bonding then distressing of deadstock Diesel T-shirt jersey into fraying and fragmenting long skirts and supersized pants was also noteworthy. "We want to make more handcrafted pieces and make them locally, out of whatever we have at the factory," Martens said.

Entering the showspace for his Diesel runway debut in a vast industrial lot on the southern outskirts of Milan, it became apparent that his sense of spectacle didn't stop with the UFO; enormous inflatable figures dwarfed the red runway-think Allen Jones paying a blow-up homage to 'Dirrty' Christina Aguilera. She is but one of the '00s MTV legends who towered over this collection. Just check out everything from the opening look, a teeny denim bra top with a pair of distressed and peeling (a recurrent technique here) faded jeans, to the tongue in cheek belt skirts, the trompe l'oeil catsuits, motocross velvet minis, and be-logoed stiletto boots. Those suggest a certain demographic of the population might be ready to ironically try out the kind of spike heels we haven't seen for eons.

The venue had been art directed to this startling effect by Ye collaborator Niklas Bildstein Zaar (he worked on Donda), which suggests that Martens is as shrewd about contemporary pop culture as he is knowledgeable about its low-slung, hip-jutting, flesh-showing past. Shrewd, but never cynical, it must be said. What makes Martens's Diesel sing (sorry) is that it's done with wit and grit and love for the idea of how it can be an inclusive and democratic brand for younger folks, rendered in ways which are meaningful to them (Martens is driving a real and principled stance on sustainability without falling into greenwashing.) "It was important to really understand or reinforce our fundamental statements, so we did it last year," Martens said. "What we're doing now this year is continuing with that; really pushing it further."

And all the while he is striving to return Diesel to its position as a brand which not only reflected pop culture but drove it-and did so for a ton of people. "The really great thing about this brand is that we're quite individual in the industry," he said. "We're never going to be luxury, and we're not claiming to be luxury. We're the alternative to it." There's the refreshingly joyful and uncynical way Martens makes things for Diesel which pack his vision at every price point. The great sneakers (the latest embeds the laces into the uppers and soles, a neat and original design flourish); snappy trucker caps; reversible quilted jackets; and the new molded leather backpacks and crossbody bags which riff on the logo that was last seen flashing in the sky on IG. Out of this world, indeed.

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Diesel Fall 2022 Ready-to-Wear Collection

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Skip to main content Anyone who checked out Glenn Martens's personal Instagram the day before his Diesel show (last year Martens was made creative director of the Italian jeans brand that has pretty much ripped up the denim rule book since forever) would have seen he had posted a video of a pulsating red object in the Milanese night sky.

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Stella McCartney's newest bag has taken four years to make it to the market.

Though its half-moon shape and chunky chain details reflect the brand's signature Frayme style, the mini satchel is made of mycelium, the branching root structure of fungi that forms the base for a new generation of materials that are just making the leap from labs to store shelves.

The bag's launch as a tight run of just 100 items in July is part of a flurry of highly limited debuts from brands ranging from Hermès to Lululemon that aim to test the market for a cohort of mycelium-based leather alternatives for the first time this year.

It's a critical moment for a next-generation material that has attracted hundreds of millions of dollars of investment from brands and venture funds betting that growing consumer demand for vegan and less environmentally damaging products is set to disrupt the market for some of fashion's highest-margin and valuable products.

The items coming to market now will be a gauge of both consumer appetite and product readiness as leading materials startups in the space prepare for wider commercialisation with the aim to eventually make mycelium-based items mainstream.

To succeed, the products need to be as good as leather, so "people won't even see any compromise on ... the touch or the feel or the wearability," McCartney said during an interview in the light-filled atelier at her brand's London headquarters. "Everyone's trying to make this work. Everybody wants to make it work. But until it works, they're not going to take a leap of faith. Because they've got something that currently works very well for them."

The designer has been working on the challenge longer than most, first experimenting with Mylo, a material developed by California-based startup Bolt Threads, in 2018. The initial prototype was a museum piece - quite literally. The bag (a version of McCartney's Falabella style) was displayed in London's Victoria & Albert Museum as part of its "Fashioned from Nature" exhibition in 2018.

It was a groundbreaking glimpse at what might be possible, but it was far from market-ready. The material was brittle and cracked at the back, with a flaky, paper-like texture that was little like leather's supple feel.

It took seven more iterations and years of close collaboration with the scientists at Bolt Threads and McCartney's manufacturing partners to improve the material's performance, quality and feel to a point where it was ready for sale. Early models had a sticky texture and were easily damaged. The quality of the material was inconsistent. And McCartney's team had to figure out with its factories how to make products stick together because Mylo could not hold standard glues.

"I'm obviously a bit of a glutton for punishment," McCartney said while contemplating a prototype of the first style set to make it to market, a structured matte black bag with a slightly pebbled texture. "Hopefully in the history of the fashion industry, this will be a mark that will be looked back on ... like, 'wow, this was the beginning, the first time we ever saw that,' and now it's mainstream."
Demand for New Materials
Humans have been wearing clothing, bags and shoes made from animal skin for hundreds of thousands of years. Today, the global luxury industry thrives on leather goods - prized for their versatility, durability, aesthetic and links to powerful cultural archetypes from cowboys to rockers. The category made up around half of the roughly $100 billion in sales generated by Europe's five largest luxury companies in 2020, according to equity analysts at Bernstein.

But the leather supply chain is also linked to animal cruelty and comes with significant environmental cost. Now, a rapid shift in consumer tastes towards products that live up to higher environmental and ethical standards is driving change. Other once highly valued fabrics like fur and exotic skins have already fallen from favour among some of luxury's biggest players.

While leather is much more entrenched, its links to industrial cattle farming and polluting tanning processes also make it a particularly high-impact material that's attracting mounting scrutiny. The potential for disruption is already playing out in associated sectors as plant-based meats and milk enjoy rapid growth, fuelled by a young consumer base concerned about both animal rights and the climate crisis.

Change has been slower to come to fashion, where (largely plastic) leather alternatives have historically been seen as cheaper, lower quality options that are difficult to position as more environmentally friendly. (It's a challenge LVMH-backed McCartney is all too familiar with. Her refusal to use real leather in her collections was seen as a huge risk when she launched her brand with rival Kering (then Gucci Group) in 2001. And though she's proven out the business case, the quest for real bio-based options is ongoing.

Interest is rapidly growing elsewhere, too. The market for innovative alternatives to animal skins is expected to be worth $2.2 billion by 2026, according to the nonprofit Material Innovation Initiative. Companies including Gucci- and Balenciaga-owner Kering, Prada and Hermès are experimenting with alternatives.

"There is an under-served segment of the market who want high quality, natural materials in line with their values. That is a segment the industry is very excited about," said Matt Scullin, chief executive at MycoWorks, the California-based startup that convinced top-end leather goods powerhouse Hermès to break with tradition and experiment with its engineered mycelium. "That is where we stand to have the most impact in helping luxury brands grow in the near term and could be disruptive in the long term."

Hopefully in the history of the fashion industry, this will be a mark that will be looked back on.

Materials made from mycelium's branching webs have attracted particular interest. Compared to other next-generation alternatives, the process to grow sheets of interlacing mushroom roots is relatively mature, requires little energy or land and has a manufacturing process that is relatively easy to scale. That's prompted a nearly unprecedented collaboration between brands, material science startups and manufacturers to get the technology to market.

Stella McCartney's new bag is one product of an unusual consortium that also includes Kering, Adidas and Lululemon which have all committed to developing products using Mylo. Lululemon launched two bags with Mylo trims in February, while Adidas is aiming to roll out products within a year.

New York-based material science company Ecovative added Reformation and footwear company Wolverine to a group of brands working to commercialise its material last week. Meanwhile, Balenciaga's Winter 2022 collection featured a dramatic full-length coat crafted from Ephea, a mycelium-based material developed by Italian manufacturer Sqim. Hermès said it expects to bring out items using MycoWorks' engineered mycelium in the coming months.

"Mycelium materials are the best solution currently available for fashion products," said Christian Tubito, director at Kering's Material Innovation Lab. "It's a little step when compared to other materials used for centuries in the fashion industry, but that little step is necessary in order to make a bigger one."
Supply Chain Challenges
There are still significant challenges before mushroom materials make it to the mainstream.

Different materials have varying properties and qualities and aren't all appropriate for the same applications. For instance, McCartney's team found Mylo is still quite rigid meaning more development is needed for use in slouchy bag styles or ready-to-wear. The material also still requires plastic content to ensure quality, feel and durability, something the Bolt Threads team is actively working to reduce, chief executive Dan Widmaier said.

Hermès' collaboration with MycoWorks was initially due to launch at the end of last year but still hasn't hit the market. "This has not been about bringing something to market fast, it has been about bringing the right thing to market at the best possible quality that is scalable," said Scullin.

And while companies are working to scale up production, volumes are currently limited and prices are high. McCartney's Mylo Frayme bags are set to retail at £1,995 ($2,485). The brand's most similar model currently for sale retails at £1,150. Adidas has held off rolling out products made from the material in part to ensure it can secure consistent quantities and quality of supply, said Paul Smith, the company's senior director of innovation.

Efforts to resolve some of those kinks are already underway. MycoWorks is working to open a new facility that can produce millions of square feet of its engineered mycelium each year. Bolt Threads is in the process of scaling up a million square metre plant in the Netherlands, with plans to expand into the double-digit million square metre range within the next three years.

Though a square foot of Mylo currently costs around $30 per square foot, on par with top calf leather, which retails for around $25 to $40 a square foot, Widmaier said, with scale, it could come down to within the single-digit dollar range.
A New Status Symbol?
Perhaps just as important as the practical business challenges, the current moment is a test for whether consumers are ready to embrace mycelium as a luxury material.

Some, like Prada's head of sustainability and marketing Lorenzo Bertelli, believe "the consumer is not ready." The Milanese company is holding off on scaling up its experiments with leather alternatives, he told BoF in an interview earlier this month.

At Kering, it's notable that the first brand to bring a mycelium-based product to market is Balenciaga, a label known for challenging fashion's conventions and pushing social boundaries. But where Balenciaga goes, others often follow.

Lululemon's initial Mylo products generated a strong consumer response globally, despite selling at a premium to the brand's regular products, said chief product officer Sun Choe. The company is planning to roll out further products towards the end of next year. McCartney's Frayme bags will go on wider release in 2023, with plans to also introduce a new colour.

"The true barometer at the end of the day will be the customer reaction - sales will be our final litmus test," said Julie Gilhart, chief development officer at brand platform Tomorrow. "If the product has quality, style and is not more expensive than leather, then it's a game-changer."

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Stella McCartney's newest bag has taken four years to make it to the market. Though its half-moon shape and chunky chain details reflect the brand's signature Frayme style, the mini satchel is made of mycelium, the branching root structure of fungi that forms the base for a new generation of materials that are just making the leap from labs to store shelves.

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Vegan leather, pleather, leatherette – despite their names there is one thing all these materials have in common – they are not leather.

What is Vegan Leather?

There is no such thing as vegan leather. Leather comes from the hide of an animal. Vegan describes foods and materials that do not come from animals. The two words cannot combine.

The term was coined as a marketing device, drawing on the connection of the word ‘vegan’ with natural, which in most cases for leather alternatives does not ring true. Leather alternatives, including plant-based ones, go through many processes in their production, and most of them are plastic-based and derived from fossil fuel.

What is Synthetic Leather?

Putting aside the misuse of the word ‘leather’… Synthetic or artificial leathers are designed to look like leather, often with texture added to mimic the surface of natural cowhide. They are usually made from oil-derived plastic and coated with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) or polyurethane (PU).  Other names for synthetic leather include:

Faux leather

Pleather

PU leather

Leatherette

There are some materials that are being offered as alternatives to leather that are plant based. Because most of these lack the structural integrity and durability of leather they often rely on plastics as part of the manufacturing process. In fact, most of these materials are more than 50% plastic.  The benefit of non-plastic material is that it biodegrades faster; unfortunately, oil-derived plastics or natural products that are impregnated with plastics take hundreds of years to decompose. Leather normally takes no longer than 50 to biodegrade.

Plant-based alternatives include:

Wine or grape leather

Cork leather

Pineapple leather

Mushroom leather

Palm leather

In March 2021 the Research Institute for Leather and Synthetic Materials (FILK) conducted research into materials marketed as alternatives to leather, analysing their composition and durability.

Its main conclusion was that “Leather is unique. So far, it has not been possible to replace leather.”

Read more on the FILK report here.

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What do the names of 'leather alternatives' mean? - Real Leather. Stay Different.

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Vegan leather, pleather, leatherette - despite their names there is one thing all these materials have in common - they are not leather.

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I started my research by looking at social media. BOF posted an article about the brand, how Glenn Martens pieces were easily spotted on celebrities like Dua Lipa, Rihanna and Bella Hadid. Renzo Rosso, in 2019, literally put his baby, the brand he founded and build from the ground up, to CEO Massimo Piombini and the Creative Director Glenn Martens, leaving them the possibility to create something new and contemporary, something that would interest young people and would show Diesel position in the fashion industry; Rosso knows that being a private owned conglomerate makes it hard to compete with the big French groups as LWMH and Kering but he's showing his full support.
I have also looked at Angus Cloud and Diesel profiles on Instagram; I have found the cover for In The Know magazine where Cloud is wearing full Diesel Spring 2022, a matching greyish nylon set.

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Lau, S (2019) DIESEL: Dream, Disruption, Deviation, Denim. New York, Rizzoli

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Lau, S (2019) DIESEL: Dream, Disruption, Deviation, Denim. New York, Rizzoli

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Diesel published this book 3 years ago and it is available to purchase online and in store; it explores the brand's beginning and evolution, starting from a single pair of denim that owner Renzo Rosso made himself with his mother's sewing machine to the latest collection before the publishing of the book, SS20. There are important employees feedback and amazing images from past campaigns/collaboration; also, it shows the genius behind Renzo Rosso, an average guy from norther Italy that with a simple vision managed to travel the world and create a global brand from scratch, creating everything himself for almost 40 years, seeing the world around him change and evolve and not getting scared of it, but instead embracing it and create something fresh.

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DIESEL Dream, Disruption, Deviation, Denim

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for this comp shop I went to some of the stores and sub sequentially to Selfridges and look at the difference between the collections. The collections were really similar, with plain bottoms and mostly raw/clean cuts for the denim; most of the colour used was across categories like t-shirts and sweatshirts. I think that the closeness to the summer sales made it quite hard for the stores to put on display the new exciting stuff, with the preview collection dropping in a couple of weeks and therefore not ready to be out. Looking at the denim, Squared definitely is the one with the highest price point ( especially being made in Italy and having the most customised products between all of them).

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L4 INP LINE DETAIL Range Plan with VAT(1)-3

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More and more retailers are coming out with ideas to create a more sustainable way of conducting retail; using unused spaces, old installations are just some of the sustainable ideas that this retailers have. The Future From Waste Lab is a business based in Melbourne that aims to create a platform in which brands that want to be sustainable can experiment their idea of retail, either physical or digital.
As for my range, my initial idea pushed me to create three pop up store for the event and the presentation of the range but later on, once I realised the amount of stores that Diesel has around the world, I have decided to move them into three flagship stores, New York, London and Milan.

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The Future From Waste Lab in Melbourne was built to make fashion's life cycle visible, with big intentions from Australian designer label Kitx.

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Asked what the future of retail looks like, Australian fashion designer Kit Willow imagined a store that could showcase a product's entire life cycle from start to finish, waste and labour and all.

"[Property developer] Beulah came to me and said, 'Kit, what is the future of fashion retail? We are using this beautiful building in Melbourne as a testing ground for future ideas'," says Willow, whose fashion brand Kitx is one of the most prominent in Australia. With a chuckle, she recalls saying she didn't know the answer to that question. "I said, 'What I do know is we have an enormous waste issue in fashion globally. Why don't we set up a lab where the entire process, from waste to finished good, is transparent - waste fashion arriving, being washed, cutting it open, making it, machining it, shooting it on a model. And that's what the Future From Waste Lab is. We've made it happen."

The retail space, created in collaboration with Melbourne-based urban developers Beulah International, is aimed at reimagining fashion retail for a sustainable future. The Future From Waste Lab sells upcycled garments, from tops to dresses to trench coats. It's also part designer studio and sewing factory, with a team that does everything on site from cutting used clothes to sewing the fabric fragments into new garments. And, it's part modelling and photo studio as well as, effectively, part clothing dump - the raw materials coming in are garments that were otherwise destined for a landfill.

The experience of seeing the end-to-end process - the would-be waste, the amount of time it takes to process it all and the amount of effort that a seamstress, working right there in front of them, puts into making a new garment - has the potential to change how people think about clothes.

Used textiles arrive from a local organisation, Upparel, that diverts clothes from landfill; those clothes get washed, deconstructed and redesigned into new garments; those garments are then modelled and photographed to be uploaded for e-commerce - and it all happens on-site, in one physical space that is open for anyone passing by to experience and witness the entire process. It opened in November, and has since hosted residencies with four of Australia's leading designers, who have spent six weeks designing their own garments following that same process.

Long a fringe practice in the fashion industry, upcycling, or repurposing waste garments into new ones, is now gaining traction among mainstream designers and retailers. By keeping clothes out of landfill - and making new clothes without extracting new resources from the Earth - upcycling has clear and direct benefits for the environment. However, in the context of the global $2.5 trillion fashion industry, the potential for large-scale impact is currently limited - individual designers practising upcycling here and there are not going to shift the entire ecosystem. The real promise of a space like the lab, according to experts, is its potential to change the way people, designers and consumers alike, think about fashion.

Experts say the experience of seeing the end-to-end process - the would-be waste, the amount of time it takes to process it all and the amount of effort that a seamstress, working right there in front of them, puts into making a new garment - has the potential to change how people think about clothes. Visiting the lab could spur a deeper appreciation for what people already own or a more mindful approach to shopping for new clothes - including, perhaps, a willingness to pay more for them or a reevaluation of whether they need new clothes at all.

The mindset shift is exactly what Natalie Ho, a Future From Waste Lab customer, says she observed when a group of teenagers stepped in one day, looking confused at first because they were prepared to shop a typical collection. They took in what was happening around them - the piles of waste, the arduous sewing process - and she could almost see the gears turning inside their heads.

"Once they walked in and started to understand what's involved - how many hours of engagement it takes just to produce that one garment - that opened that conversation, of: 'What are we doing and how are we doing it, and really for what reason? Why are we just ordering, ordering without thinking about it?'" says Ho.

Even Adelene Teh, executive director and co-founder of Beulah International noticed, despite being involved in the project from the start, that the experience of being in the lab had an impact on her as well. "We're starting to see people being really engaged with the concept of it - not just circular fashion, but also being educated," says Teh. "I'm not usually a denim jacket kind of person, but I started to appreciate - wow, this jacket is not just a denim jacket. It has meaning to it. It made me more conscious and aware of what kind of decisions I'm making with my clothing."

Restoring connections with process and people

Some liken the concept of opening the doors to a clothing production facility, and its potential to change the way people think about clothes, to the shifts that have emerged in the food sector in the last decade or so. Just as farmers markets and open-kitchen restaurants have transformed how people eat and think about food - making choices for better health or to support local farmers, for example, and being more willing to pay higher prices for better quality - there may be potential for similar connections to be made between fashion's producers and consumers.

That may not mean meeting a clothing vendor at a farmer's market ( although it could), but it can cultivate a deeper understanding of and appreciation for all that goes into making an individual garment. "If you never cook, then you don't appreciate that getting that flavour is going to mean you're cooking for hours. It's the same thing with fashion," says London designer Patrick McDowell.

That parallel is not a coincidence, says David Monaghan, general manager of commercial and culture at Beulah. When they were planning out a roadmap for the Melbourne project - which also includes a hotel, restaurants, pop-ups and other stores focused more on experiences than physical goods alone - he says macro trends played into the process significantly, and that included the growing interest from consumers in connecting more with their purchases. "We've seen it in food for a long time, with people interested in local miles, where things are coming from and how healthy things are - and I think that's just moving naturally into some of these other categories," he says.

Visiting the lab could spur a deeper appreciation for what people already own or a more mindful approach to shopping for new clothes - including, perhaps, a willingness to pay more or a reevaluation of whether they need new clothes at all.

Willow's larger hope for the lab is to scale the concept and spark a ripple-effect change across the industry.

"Now that it's working so well and Beulah is happy with it, I said to them, 'Imagine if we can pick the model up and take it to London, for instance, and do a pop-up for 12 weeks, and call in all the local denim waste. Any denim you don't want, send it to the lab'," she says. "And do the same process, fully transparent, in London. Then go to LA; then pick it up and take it somewhere else - with the view really to show designers and the community the power of using waste as a resource."

Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
More from this author: The importance of America's Fabric Act "can't be overstated" Zegna joins Nike linking CEO bonuses to climate targets Fashion is stalling on climate. Suppliers are trying to act

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Can a store really change mindsets on sustainable consumption?

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Sign up to our newsletter for a truly global perspective on the fashion industry The Future From Waste Lab in Melbourne was built to make fashion's life cycle visible, with big intentions from Australian designer label Kitx. To become a Vogue Business Member and receive the Sustainability Edit newsletter, click here .

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Massimo Piombini stepped down from his position as CEO after almost three years; his Sunshine Project made possible for Diesel to come back into the fashion industry with a bang and with a lot of expectations for the future.

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Diesel promotes Eraldo Poletto to global CEO, replacing Piombini

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The corporate shuffle comes as the brand navigates a broader rebranding under creative director Glenn Martens.

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it is always more common for fashion houses to create their own version of digital pieces to then be sold into the Metaverse. I think that the most forward looking brand at the moment, considering their digital footprint, is definitely Balenciaga: we just need to look at BalenciagaxFortnite, the SS22 fashion show realised featured in an episode of the Simpsons. If we look at Diesel, they just recently lunched their partnership with NFT's, including some pieces from the FW 22 collection; it is a first step into a fast changing fashion industry and hopefully it will be carry on in the future.

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A spate of recent partnerships are illustrating how NFTs can more closely integrate with physical goods.

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Well into fashion's NFT boom, physical clothing is getting a digital twin.

Digital twins link products to their virtual versions. Proponents of the tech envision a future where every new fashion purchase is paired with a digital counterpart that can be worn in the metaverse. As fashion more broadly embraces digital fashion, tech companies are pushing ahead to make digital twins a reality.

PlatformE, a Portugal-based company that helps brands including Kering and LVMH create 3D product renders, is behind a new "cyber-physical" apparel brand called Valaclava that sells customisable digital fashion as NFTs alongside physical counterparts, produced on demand. Last week, Web3-focused studio Spatial Labs - which is backed by Jay Z's Marcy Venture Partners - introduced clothing embedded with a blockchain-enabled chip called the LNQ One. The products let people "upload" the clothing to customisable avatars. And Argentinian fashion label Àcheval is embarking on a years-long Web3 roadmap that includes a handful of products that will be sold as NFTs first, thanks to an investment and mentorship from Arthur Madrid, co-founder and CEO of digital real estate platform The Sandbox.

"I see a huge potential in phygital items. The fact that they are collectibles and that you can use them in different types of realities is a whole new way of experiencing the products," Madrid says.

Mainstream fashion and beauty brands' use of NFTs have varied, starting with experimental art pieces and expanding into more diverse categories, including limited edition collectibles, virtual wearables and tokens of attendance. For many, NFTs have been an experiment or a marketing play. Tying them to physical goods could help link NFTs to sales and make for a more thorough Web3 strategy.

Some brands have started to link the physical and digital: last month, Nike announced it would begin "forging" (meaning manufacturing) physical versions of digital "Space Drip" sneakers through Rtfkt, the experimental startup it acquired last year, whose founders have been hinting at authentication through a possible NFC chip. Last week, Prada introduced its first standalone NFT project: a collection of limited edition physical T-shirts (sold at about $1,000) that come with a matching NFT twin. The brand already is adding NFC and RFID chips to all its projects, which could potentially set up the addition of NFT twins to all products.

This gives NFTs a more long-term practicality for traditional brands, and offers an antidote to the sentiment that "real" fashion is somehow separate from Web3's innovations. While implementation is more complex than NFTs as event souvenirs or membership cards, phygital sales can add value to products and offer a revenue stream for brands in the secondhand market. They also offer a way to continue to add features to products over time, as the digital link offers an ongoing connection to the customer.

Mitigating risk

Valaclava launched in May with a collection of 8,000 garments (eight designs with 1,000 units each), including a long-sleeved T-shirt, a hoodie and cargo pants, in the €200 to €300 range. People can lightly customise each item with a logo in various places, or a different print, and then the item is made to order and shipped within 21 days. The physical versions include an attached NFC tag that owners can scan to open an app and access the product's NFT "passport", which works as a membership to the Valaclava "clvn", primarily through a Discord server.

This combines a number of new-to-fashion elements: 3D digital design, product customisation, on-demand manufacturing, NFC chips, digital twins and NFTs - a recipe that a larger, risk-averse luxury brand might find intimidating, says Gonçalo Cruz, co-founder and CEO of PlatformE. Still, each offers potential benefits that are amplified when used in concert, including reduced waste, immediate gratification, increased personalisation and exclusivity and a persistent link between the creator, the garment and the customer. "We can test and get things wrong and right. If we were a restaurant, this takes all the ingredients we have in the fridge to make a special thing. I am sure we will have tons of learnings." And, if this project attracts a new client? Maybe their project won't include all the elements, he says - but at least they will be able to choose from the full menu.

This month, Valaclava will test the waters with a partnership that could lay out a blueprint for how fashion brands make use of its tech capabilities. A tie up with gaming platform Call of Duty includes a 1,200-unit collection (four different pieces) and promotion on Call of Duty's website and email outreach, at up to €600, essentially a "Call of Duty luxury garment", says PlatformE group marketing director Lui Iarocheksi, who serves as the brand's creative director. People who own a Valaclava garment get a badge on the game. "We are launching with a scarcity level of 300 units per design," he says. "This is what makes NFT projects successful - scarcity, and they will get fomo because they know the garments are ultra rare and highly collectible."

Further experimentation is planned. Owners of Valaclava items are able to sell their NFTs via Opensea and can choose to divorce them from the physical item, but the infrastructure is still lacking if people want to sell the two together, Iarocheksi says. Augmented reality wearables for social media and digital wearables for platforms such as Zepeto are also on the roadmap.

Creativity and credibility

Founded in 2018, Àcheval is a glamorous gaucho-inspired label whose gaucho pants and leather bags are sold by the likes of Net-a-Porter and Matches. In February, The Sandbox's Madrid, whose background is in gaming, invested an undisclosed amount in Àcheval. Now, he is helping Àcheval founders Sofia Achaval de Montaigu and Lucila Sperber develop and deliver on a Web3 strategy that includes a collection of goods that are sold first as NFTs; an avatar project with a pop star and retail space in The Sandbox; and a blockchain-based virtual world where Gucci and Adidas are also setting up shop. Madrid also connected the brand work with creative agency Al Dente, which works with Chanel and Louis Vuitton and is also developing its own Sandbox real estate.

"We waited for him to come on board to start to work on this, because we wanted his advice and to work together with him," de Montaigu says. "We are really looking to him for this, and we always want to be one step forward. It's important to be part of the future, and this is what is happening."

It also helps The Sandbox to have brands like Àcheval playing ball. Both The Sandbox and competitor Decentraland have been heavily courting fashion brands, as digital fashion plays an outsized role in how people communicate in and engage with virtual worlds. Ushering in an emerging luxury brand gives The Sandbox fashion credibility, and ensures that Àcheval's onboarding is relatively smooth.

Àcheval is digitising four of its pieces: a tee, a poncho, trousers and a hat, which will be wearable in The Sandbox and provide special properties, Madrid says, such as dancing to folkloric music via the poncho, or horseriding in the plains of Argentina thanks to the gaucho hat. "The idea is to activate the imaginary world of these products, make the consumer travel and live a different experience through their virtual twins," Madrid says.

While Àcheval's physical pieces range from about $480 to $850, the NFTs will be about $300 with a limited production run. This more accessible price point is intended to encourage more participation, de Montaigu says. The NFTs will also come with a Sandbox wearable.

Similarly, Spatial Labs's new collection of connected apparel, called "Lnq Hardwear", lets people create an avatar that can wear the digital versions of the Hardwear garments. The products are connected to an app through the Lnq chip (pictured at top), and planned functionality includes a range of concepts, including "proof-of-tap" to let people opine on future mints, and link to playlists, social profiles and crypto wallets. The company is calling the functionality "the wearable internet", and the category "the metaverse of things". While connected apparel isn't a new concept - Levi's and Google Jacquard's connected trucker jacket came out in 2017 - blockchain-based connectivity adds another layer of potential creativity.

"We recognised a gap in the Web3 industry and took this as an opportunity to develop hardware that would equip users and creatives with the tools they need to create, engage and share with their communities," said Spatial Labs founder Iddris Sandu, who has previously worked with brands including Beyoncé's Ivy Park, Kanye West's Yeezy and Rihanna's Fenty line, in a statement.

Hardwear is already working on brand partnerships with products including bags, glasses, jewellery and accessories, and plans to licence its Lnq One Chip for select brands, which will be able to personalise products by running curated campaigns through the brand's products itself by prompting users to "tap" on a product to unlock content. "This provides a new metric mechanism for brands to see a product's current engagement," Sandu says, "and will also introduce new metrics of rarity of a product," which will incentivise users to keep it, he hopes. "NFTs in their current state only offer speculative digital value."

And for Madrid, of The Sandbox, in addition to valuing founders and being a fan of polo, the drive to invest in and collaborate with Àcheval helps him understand how people create new identities through their avatars. "I am interested in the merger between new technologies and how the consumer engages with them to have a new experience, so of course we are working together on this vision."

Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
More on this topic: The blockchain playbook: From LVMH's Aura to Arianee The tech shaking up fashion's inventory load Episode 1: Prada's RFID investment

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Fashion's next NFT play: Twinning digital NFTs to physical items

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Sign up to our newsletter for a truly global perspective on the fashion industry A spate of recent partnerships are illustrating how NFTs can more closely integrate with physical goods. To become a Vogue Business Member and receive the Technology Edit newsletter, click here .

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Available at: https://www.wgsn.com/insight/article/93318

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Available at: https://www.wgsn.com/insight/article/93318

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Environmental Profit & Loss Account (EP&L

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Environmental Profit & Loss Account (EP&L

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World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)

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Kering is a pioneer in Natural Capital assessment having created Environmental Profit and Loss (EP&L) accounting to measure, monetize and manage our environmental impacts in our own operations and across the entire supply chain.

The EP&L analysis reveals the true impacts resulting from Kering's business activities and helps us find effective solutions to mitigate our footprint. In turn, this allows us to better address climate change and develop more resilient business models, as well as providing transparency to our stakeholders along the way.

Aligned with our open-sourcing philosophy, Kering's EP&L methodology contributed to the Natural Capital Protocol development. Making it open-source aims to help advance the inclusion and adoption of Natural Capital accounting into mainstream decision-making and corporate reporting.

Kering also developed an easy to use tool, the "My EP&L" App, to assist the fashion community in understanding how design decisions influence the extent of environmental impacts such as material choices, sourcing regions, etc.

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world business council for sustainable development

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Kering: Environmental Profit and Loss (EP&L) accounting

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Kering is a pioneer in Natural Capital assessment having created Environmental Profit and Loss (EP&L) accounting to measure, monetize and manage our environmental impacts in our own operations and across the entire supply chain. The EP&L analysis reveals the true impacts resulting from Kering's business activities and helps us find effective solutions to mitigate our footprint.

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Creating solutions for a world where clothes are kept in use

For decades, jeans have been at the heart of countless fashion collections. However, they are no exception to the fashion industry's take-make-waste approach. Making jeans requires large amounts of resources, such as pesticides, water, and energy, and the way they're designed and constructed makes them difficult to remake and recycle recycle Transform a product or component into its basic materials or substances and reprocessing them into new materials. after use.

Redesigning this iconic fashion staple is the perfect starting point on the journey towards a circular economy for fashion , where products are designed to be:

Made from safe and recycled or renewable inputs

What is The Jeans Redesign?

The Jeans Redesign demonstrates how jeans can be designed and made for a circular economy.

The Jeans Redesign Jeans Redesign The Jeans Redesign guidelines encourage leading brands, mills, and manufacturers to transform the way jeans are made. guidelines - developed with input from 80 experts across industry, academia, and NGOs, encourage leading brands, mills, and manufacturers to transform the way jeans are designed and made.

The first redesigned jeans using the guidelines were brought to market in June 2021. Today, 100+ organisations from more than 25 countries across the industry have redesigned jeans - moving beyond theoretical discussions, learning by doing, testing new solutions, and overcoming innovation gaps.

Shared learnings and transparency are an important part of the project. Participants are required to publicly update on their progress and to show the methods they have used to meet the guidelines. In 2021, the guidelines 'minimum bar' was raised to increase the level of ambition and drive the industry forward.

Download the Insights Report 2021-2023

The Jeans Redesign Insights Report 2021-2023 is available in: English

Over the past two years, leading brands in the fashion industry have redesigned and transformed over 1.5 million pairs of jeans into garments that are more durable, have more transparent sourcing of materials, are easier to recycle, and are made using safe materials and processes.

But jeans are just the start. Participants are increasingly applying circular economy principles to other garments, proving circular design can become the norm.

Industry and policymakers can take learnings and apply them to all garments. Then we must not only reimagine the products of the future, but also redesign the services, business models, and supply chains to deliver them and ensure our clothes are kept in use.

Jeans were always intended to be the start of this journey. By redesigning products so they are fit for a circular economy circular economy A systems solution framework that tackles global challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution. It is based on three principles, driven by design: eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials (at their highest value), and regenerate nature. , we are making progress. But to truly challenge conventional linear models at scale we must go beyond redesigning products. We need to redesign the services, supply chains, and business models that deliver garments and keep them in use. The path forward is clear. It's time to step up the pace and scale of progress.

- Jules Lennon, Fashion Initiative Lead, Ellen MacArthur Foundation

You may also like...

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The Jeans Redesign demonstrates how jeans can be designed and made for a circular economy.

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No minimum wage for Italy as EU reaches living standards deal

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EU negotiators reached a deal on minimum wages across the bloc on Monday, but Italy still hasn’t adopted any minimum wage law.

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The 1DR bag has been the "IT ITEM" for SS22, it has been sold out in Europe and North America now for over a month and it doesn't seem to slow down. The interest of the female customers has been unprecedented and hopefully, in the future, Glenn Martens will come up with some groundbreaking ideas for the male customers.

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Diesel Bags Are Everywhere Right Now

10 April 2022

INSTAGRAM / @MEGANTHEESTALLION

All products featured on British Vogue are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Cast your mind back to the early 2000s when slouchy shoulder bags were all the rage. Mary-Kate and Ashley had yet to discover their penchant for slugging around well-loved roomy totes, and musical duo t.A.T.u was single-handily spearheading the shirtless tie trend that recently made a return on the autumn/winter 2022 runways. Everyday underarm bags, in particular, were less distinctive and were more of an afterthought, rather than the centrepiece. Fast forward to 2022, and designers such as Diesel’s Glenn Martens have ensured micro bags remain a focal point this summer.

Since the announcement of his appointment as creative director back in October 2020 – adding to his already extensive resumé, which currently includes heading up Y/Project’s creative division – the fashion polymath has had all eyes on him. The highly revered creative, who cut his teeth at Jean Paul Gaultier, brought his can’t-be-tamed vision to Gaultier during his haute couture takeover in January. His reimagining of trompe-l’œil prints (which were ubiquitous on the Y/Project runway) was a much-discussed moment at the start of the year. And fashion editors are currently lusting after every single item from the Diesel autumn/winter 2022 collection. Diesel-mania is sweeping the globe – just take a look at Dua Lipa’s wardrobe.

A model carrying a silver 1DR bag in the pre-fall 2022 collection.
Diesel

Martens’s interpretation of leather goods has been particularly fascinating to watch. The conventional hallmarks of a classic Diesel bag are still present – think noticeable branding and sturdy handles – but Martens has injected much of his off-beat signature codes into the brand’s napa leather bag line. Colourways are bold, construction is scaled down, and they are purposefully non-gender-specific, with elements of Y2K-tastic detailing. “We compressed the brand’s DNA into accessories,” Martens tells Vogue. “[The] 1DR bag is straight-forward, easy, sexy, genderless and fun – which, ultimately, are exactly Diesel’s key values.”

A-listers are queuing up to own a piece of the reworked line, and the 1DR bag, in particular, has captured the attention of It-girls globally. Julia Fox was spotted clutching the canary-yellow mini-bag at the show in February. Over on the ’gram, Megan Thee Stallion dedicated an entire carousel to her rose-gold Diesel ensemble with a matching bag, earning over two million likes. Recently, style chameleon Paloma Elsesser added an all-white model to her everyday uniform, and Gossip Girl actor Whitney Peak is rarely seen without her short-strap shoulder bag. “The 1DR bag is a definitive hit,” says British Vogue’s fashion & accessories editor, Donna Wallace. “It’s an easily identifiable accessory, which speaks to the current 2000s renaissance; it’s satisfying to see a brand front and centre of its own moment of appreciation.”

Our advice? Run – don’t walk – to the nearest computer and add a 1DR bag to your cart while you still can.

Diesel Multi 1DR Bag

Diesel Multi 1DR Bag

Diesel 1DR Bag

Diesel Multi 1DR Bag

Diesel Black 1DR Bag

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From Megan Thee Stallion to Julia Fox, every superstar has a 1DR Diesel bag.

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