Glenn Martens’s new H&M collab is for “the businessman or the sl*t”

Fresh off hosting a Diesel egg hunt across Milan and debuting his ready-to-wear collection for Maison Margiela in Paris last month, Glenn Martens is in London, seated beside H&M’s Ann-Sofie Johansson for a press preview of their upcoming collaboration. He’s in good spirits, though he admits he’s nursing an infected wisdom tooth that he’s eager to have looked at. (This paucity of time seems very on-brand for someone juggling two fashion houses since 2020, first as the creative director of Y/Project and Diesel and, since quitting Y/Project, Diesel and Margiela.) “It is normally a sign of youth, no? I feel very young,” the 42-year-old laughs.

“Our customers love our designer collabs,” says Johansson, H&M’s head of design for womenswear and creative advisor. “The idea of giving people access to a brand or a designer they otherwise might not be able to afford is still strong—as well as the curiosity about what we can create together.” She adds Martens has been on their radar since his Y/Project days. “We’re always looking for somebody with a very special way of designing things or a very clear point of view. When we saw what he did at Y/Project, it was intriguing because we hadn’t seen anything like that before. It was young, fresh, innovative, and a little weird in the best way.”

For Martens, who is known for his conceptual, forward-thinking, and subversive designs, the appeal was a chance to make his wild ideas wearable at scale. “So many designs that I’ve done at Y/Project, or even at Diesel or Margiela, come back from the supplier with a price point that is not affordable, making this sort of creativity quite exclusive. But now, it’s going to be able to live in the streets for everybody. I’m so excited to see all those little gremlins wearing our wire creations and big thigh-high boots, owning this collection, and really feeling the fun factor,” says the Belgian designer.

The collection, which has been two years in the making, as Johansson puts it, “Glenn-proofs” H&M’s bestselling silhouettes. The creative process began with Martens and the team identifying the most cliché, stereotypical way of dressing, which led them to the quintessential British wardrobe.

“If you have all the design twists on a garment that has no real connection with the streets, you start looking like a Teletubby,” he says. “It’s important to stay with an archetype. I like to start with something that exists and then try to have a flash of conceptualism on it, fuck it up, and, basically, turn it around.” Everyday pieces, like checked shirts, kilt-style skirts, trench coats, and bomber jackets, are reworked with Martens’s sly twists: foil and metal wires sewn into collars, skirts with printed trompe-l’oeil kilts, denim with hooks and eyes that let you hitch it into odd shapes.

The pieces are built for play. Shirts and pants can be sculpted into different forms thanks to the built-in foil and wiring. A cable-knit sweater goes from buttoned-up cosy to shoulder-baring. “I don’t think any of it is in-your-face sexy,” says Martens. “There’s a flirtiness to it. And you can, of course, make it less sexy or more sexy as you want.”

The lineup of lust-worthy accessories follows the same mischievous logic: thigh-high boots, a Y/Project favourite, make a return, while a new handbag—a never-before-seen design that Martens was hoping to save for Maison Margiela—can be scrunched into unexpected shapes. “The bag is the biggest piece of art. You can make crazy little monsters out of it,” he says excitedly. Everything is designed to accommodate the multiple personalities we carry in a single day. “You can be a businessman or a slut at night. I think one shirt can sometimes be the answer to different moments of the day—wear it [as an] oversized shirt to do your shopping, but then in the evening you twist it up and you’re ready for a party.” Also in the collection is a version of Y/Project’s invisible strap tank top, a cult-favourite resurrected for new fans.

Even the campaign channels the same twisted classicism: a parody of a British aristocratic family portrait reimagined for 2025. “We created an amazing castle-like landscape,” Martens says. “Instead of putting the family on a chair, we built a massive scaffold full of trinkets that are very referential to traditional British culture.” Starring actors Joanna Lumley and Richard E Grant, the campaign brings together the paterfamilias and the materfamilias, an eccentric aunt, funky godchildren—all surrounded by pigeons, a red phonebooth, and other typically British elements amongst the scaffolds. “We obviously couldn’t get King Charles and Queen Camilla on the campaign. They weren’t available that day,” he chortles, “[But] we managed to get really amazing talents that are very British.”

For Martens, the collaboration also doubles as a quiet farewell to Y/Project, the brand that shaped his aesthetic vocabulary over 12 years. “It’s where I experimented, where I built the codes,” he says. “Both Diesel and Margiela are very close to me, but I haven’t invented the aesthetics—my job there is to reinterpret existing codes and take that further. But Y/Project was carte blanche. I was, like, maybe we should give this little swan song to Y/Project—an extra moment of celebration instead of just putting it in the cupboards and having it die in the darkness. I’m not saying it’s a Y/Project collection, but a lot of links are there.”

The collection is pure Martens through and through and bears his name alone—no Y/Project, no Diesel, no Maison Margiela. “I think after Karl Lagerfeld, I’m the second person [to do this] under their own name. So, it’s very big for my ego,” he chuckles. Apart from the accessories and garments, the collection also includes underwear. “I’m actually wearing the boxer shorts right now. It’s very good because now at home, I know which ones are mine and which ones are my boyfriend’s because my name is literally on them.”

It’s sort of a full-circle moment for Martens, who recalls the time when H&M first opened in his hometown of Bruges in the ’90s. “H&M was, of course, the biggest shit in Bruges when it came out,” he says. “For the first time, we actually had cool clothes at accessible price points. But they also didn’t know how to secure the clothes very well. So, I was a beautiful 14-year-old shoplifter—all my classmates, every time they had a birthday, got H&M presents strangely.” If teenage Martens once slipped H&M pieces out of the store, he’s now created a collection that kids would surely be tempted to steal from the shop floors.

“Don’t try this at home folks! Security has increased,” laughs Johansson. Indeed, it has. But this is one collaboration worth begging, borrowing—or if you must—stealing. The gremlins will make sure it sells out fast.

The H&M Glenn Martens collection launches in select stores and online on hm.com on October 30