Fashion heaved a collective sigh when news broke in the midst of Milan Fashion Week that Glenn Martens canceled his Y/Project show. That a designer as high profile and influential as Martens is facing financial pressures of this kind serves to confirm what we’ve all heard whispered: that the system isn’t really working for independent brands. At a showroom appointment on the last day of Paris Fashion Week Martens was remarkably candid. “Very honestly, we had a cash flow issue,” he said. “We did the commercial showroom during men’s week [in January], and we actually did grow. But at a certain point you have to make a choice. It’s €450,000 for a show, or €450,000 for pre-payment for production and making sure the collection is on time on the sales floor.”
That Martens chose production and the sales floor will benefit his team and his brand in the end, of course, but many were disappointed about not seeing his sculptural Y/Project clothes in motion, and some found themselves posing for this lookbook instead. Everyone from his father to his stylist Ursini Gysi to his fellow designer, Xuly Bet’s Lamine Badian Kouyaté, to Ye (formerly Kanye West) is pictured in the slideshow.
For the new collection Martens said he was thinking of pleurants, the sculptures of mourners that decorated tombs in medieval times, an instinct motivated by a sudden personal loss. He also mentioned Umberto Eco’s Middle Ages murder mystery The Name of the Rose. Putting his draping chops front-and-center, he added hoods to otherwise familiar garments like button-down shirts and fleece jackets, or inset sheer panels behind a row of buttons that gave his clothes a slouchy asymmetric shape. Some pieces featured manipulable velcro pieces that let their wearers adjust their silhouettes in the same way his bendable wire has been used in the past. A coat, for example, can convert into a cape, while a painterly floral print skirt can completely change form. Other pieces were shrouded with sheer net. The veiled pant suit gave the term fashion nun new meaning.
There were unholy references as well in the form of bondage photo prints. Binding is a theme that turned up in collections from Balenciaga to Alexander McQueen this season, but this kind of explicit imagery has been part of Martens’s vision for Y/Project for seasons. Pointing to a table of accessories, he laughed saying an It bag could help him get back on the runway. The moldable wire that he used on a little printed leather flap bag and a giant acid-wash denim bag here guarantee this at least: his accessories look like no one else’s.