Dare to be Diesel: elevated yet disrupted, corrupted, slashed, destroyed, and impossibly low-cut. The show is held in the biggest ever known graffiti installation, with over three kilometers of graffiti fabric, made by a global street art collective of around 7.000 of amateur and expert graffiti artists.
“I love that thousands of people around the world have worked together to create the set design. We gave the global street art collective complete creative freedom – they expressed themselves each in their own way, on a project that’s taken months to achieves. This is the true democracy of Diesel,” says Glenn Martens, creative director of Diesel.
The language of Diesel – denim, utility, pop, artisanal – is exploded and mixed, elevating and playing with archetypes and subverting traditions.
Severe tailoring is collarless, like a little bouclé jacket, worn with a little denim peplum as if the top of jeans, over jacquard hotpants as if distressed denim. Men’s tailoring is raw-cut and unadorned in bonded neoprene, while a women’s bouclé Basque is worn over skinny jeans with an attached denim peplum.
An extreme high-cut bouclé jacket is matched with a bouclé Basque. It’s worn with a bouclé skirt that looks cut impossibly low: it’s held in place by an attached stretch waist. These impossibly low-cut pieces run throughout the show in skirts, pants and jeans, sometimes with stretch waistbands that match, sometimes that clash.
Houndstooth jacquards are woven like they are layered and destroyed. It’s a destructive effect in the weave echoed in the cut of the garments, like a little bandeau top worn with a Basque over pants. Meanwhile, bouclé coats are mistreated so that they pill, while bouclé is printed on Lycra for shirts and the waistband that holds up a low-cut skirt in real bouclé.
Subversion is every day, like ultra-padded hooded jackets that wrap like a shawl, worn with impossibly low-cut wool skirts or denim jeans, held in place by stretch panels. Leather is boiled to give jackets and shirts extreme three dimensionality; zip-neck fluffy knits with contrast insides match the fluffy knit waistband that holds up impossibly low-cut tailored pants.
A trio of pieces pop in acid fluffy knit: a yellow ruffle bandeau and a wrap dress trimmed with ruffles, or an orange little jacket with a neckline of ruffles. A rubber trompe l’oeil body is like an extreme cable knit sweater.
Experimentation is everywhere, like plasticized denim jackets, bustiers and jeans: it’s as if the pieces have been entirely laminated, cut only for the pockets. Flocking on tulle is like the trace of garments, like the impression of cable knit floating over the body. Tulle has been woven with a jacquard that looks as if denim has been near obliterated, cut into a dress or strapless gown, or covering a padded silver jacket and coat.
Extremely low Diesel bumster jeans stay in place thanks to adjustable internal underwear. They are so extreme, they’re worn just with a chest-sized plaster printed with a life-sized image of a shirt, then stuck roughly on the body.
The Double D bag is ladylike in bouclé, while two unisex bags debut: the Flag-D slouchy bag has a wide logo strap in faux pony, while the Load-D is oval-shaped, held by two Diesel D’s either end. Men’s ankle boots have an ultra-chunky sole, while slippers are in distressed houndstooth. Bouclé kitten heel boots have the Diesel D over the toe, while the bouclé or distressed denim heels have a wedge printed to match the fabric.
Diesel eyewear debuts the Liquifie-D family, with sinuous yet chunky moulding in gluey tones, the fluid temples holding the oval D. In watches, new styles D-Curve, Wrap-D and D-Rush each play with the iconic Diesel oval D shape.
Street Art Capsule:
An exclusive capsule collection will be available on February 27th, featuring work by six international graffiti artists who each helped to create the show set. To make the collection, Diesel pieces were sent to the artists for them to graffiti in their own style. The results were then scanned and printed, bringing the creative energy of the set to selected Diesel stores worldwide, and to diesel.com.
The graffiti artists who collaborated on the collection are:
- Farai Engelbrecht (South Africa)
- Roy XR Chen (China)
- Ryota Daimon (Japan)
- Phree Hester (USA)
- Brianna Toomer (France)
- Red Longo (Italy)
Show facts:
- 3.2 kilometres of fabric have been graffitied specially for Diesel, creating the largest ever known graffiti installation in the world.
- Thousands of graffiti artists across eight countries worked together to create the set, including both professional and amateur artists from China, UAE, India, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the USA.
- Each country staged unique activations to graffiti thousands of rolls of cloth. In India, local artists graffitied the cloth at Diesel stores, inviting customers to get involved. In China and Japan, students were invited to take part, while in South Africa, graffitiing took place at a full-day event complete with a DJ set.
- The artists were given complete freedom to express themselves in their work.
- The resulting fabric entirely drapes 3.200sq meters the arena, which is then filled with Diesel’s record-breaking inflatable sculpture, first shown at the SS23 show. The sculpture, which holds the Guinness World Record for the largest ever inflatable, has now been entirely covered in graffiti.