Glenn Martens to debut at Margiela during Paris Couture in July

Glenn Martens will make his runway debut at Maison Margiela during the next Paris Haute Couture in July.

The Belgian designer will thus kick off his tenure at the Paris-based house with a Maison Margiela Artisanal collection for the Fall 2025 season. The next four-day Paris Haute Couture runs from July 7 to 10 and will feature shows by nearly 30 marques.

Glenn Martens certainly has a hard act to follow. This first Martens show for Margiela will mark the house’s return to couture since January 2024, when John Galliano staged what many would regard as the most important couture show in Paris this decade—an epic reimagining of nocturnal Paris from the 1930s staged underneath the Pont Alexandre III that marked the end of Galliano’s 10-year tenure at Maison Margiela.

No word yet on where and on what day Martens’ Margiela debut will be staged, though his predecessor not infrequently staged Maison Margiela shows inside the house’s elegant HQ, a seven-story Haussmann-era building on Place des États-Unis. Though founded as a bohemian, conceptual marque by Belgian designer Martin Margiela in edgy north Paris, the brand now resides in the tony 16th arrondissement.

“This (show) marks the beginning of an inspiring new chapter for the maison, rooted in our core creative values and shaped by Margiela’s couture heritage. Under Glenn’s direction, couture will continue to ignite creativity for the brand and drive boundary-pushing designs,” Maison Margiela said in a release.

Martin Margiela founded his brand in 1988 in Paris, going on to build a huge reputation for his off-beat clothes, worn finishes, frayed seams, and hyper-discreet attitude. Margiela never took a bow after any show—a tradition followed strictly by Galliano, who previously, at his own house and at Dior, was famous for elaborately attired and lengthy ovations.

In 2006, OTB, the main investment vehicle of Italian fashion entrepreneur Renzo Rosso, acquired complete control of the Margiela brand—the same year in which Maison Margiela Artisanal entered the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, which controls the Paris runway season.

OTB’s largest brand is the jeans label Diesel, and Rosso also named Martens its creative director back in 2020. Martens’ arrival at Margiela dovetails with the brand’s roots in Belgium, its unconventional style, and quirky take on fashion.

Prior to joining Diesel, Martens spent over a decade as the designer of Y/Project, an indie label much admired for its blend of street couture and unfinished aesthetic.

Like many top Belgian designers, Martens is a graduate of Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts. After Jean Paul Gaultier saw Martens’ 2008 graduation show, he hired Glenn to be a junior womenswear designer in his Paris house. In 2022, Gaultier continued the compliment when Martens staged a one-off couture show for Jean Paul’s house—part of a unique series of collaborations at the Puig-owned brand.

Martens is to make his couture debut in a busy season that will also feature the return of Iris van Herpen of Holland and the final show at Balenciaga by Demna, the acclaimed Georgian couturier who parent company Kering has named as the new creative director of Gucci.

The final question that remains: Will Glenn take a bow after his Margiela debut?