Glenn Martens is stepping down as creative director of Y/Project after an 11-year tenure that established the label as one of Paris’ hottest emerging labels.

A graduate of Antwerp’s prestigious Royal Academy, Martens is known for leveraging pattern-making innovation to inject strangeness and novelty into wardrobe staples like blue jeans, blazers and dusters. At Y/Project, he used details like asymmetrical waistlines, zig-zagged pleats, extra neckholes and adjustable panels to make customisable garments that can be styled as avant-garde silhouettes or worn like more normal clothing.

Y/Project won global notoriety as it dressed celebrity clients including Rihanna and Charli XCX, and remained a highlight of Paris Fashion Week a decade into the designer’s tenure. The label won France’s biggest fashion prize, ANDAM, in 2017 and 2020, the year Martens was named creative director of Diesel. The designer has since juggled his revamp of the denim giant with his role at the buzzy if financially fragile Y/Project.

The label’s next steps are uncertain: Y/Project sat out Paris Fashion Week in March, citing market uncertainty. Pascal Conté-Jodra, who joined the brand as CEO in May 2023, has left the company as of July 2024, according to his profile on LinkedIn.

Martens’ time at Y/Project was book-ended by tragedy. He was hired to lead the brand after its co-founder and initial designer Yohan Serfaty died of cancer in 2013. This June, fellow co-founder and owner Gilles Elelalouf died aged 58 after a long illness. Martens is set to show his latest collection for Diesel during Milan Fashion Week on September 21.

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