When I meet the Belgian designer Glenn Martens, we're riding through London on a double-decker bus. On the outside, his name is printed where a delivery start-up ad would usually be, alongside two letters denoting one of fashion's biggest stages: H&M.
The current creative director of both Maison Margiela and Diesel is adding the title of H&M collaborator—a coveted position whose alums range from Simone Rocha and Marni to Karl Lagerfeld and Jimmy Choo—to his already packed résumé. H&M x Glenn Martens is set to launch shortly after our chat. Out the windows of the bus, the streets are filled with locals in extra-baggy jeans and distressed bomber jackets, a look that's trickled down from Martens' own runways, particularly from his collections for Diesel and Y/Project, which he designed for over a decade before leaving last year. (The brand has since shut down.) In conversation with the retailer's top creative advisor, Ann-Sofie Johansson, though, he brushes off the assumption that anyone beyond true fashion insiders would walk into an H&M store on October 30 and immediately clock a runway celebrity.
