Entertainment

The middle finger? Glam if it is Glenn Martens who makes the “rude gesture”

June 23, 2022
10:54 AM

Glenn Martens strikes again. When a stylist is defined designer of the year already at the beginning of the year, nothing less than one can be expected from him statement at every show, a style statement for every collection.

The collection was staged yesterday, June 22, during the Paris Men’s Fashion Week Men’s Spring-Summer 2023 by Y / Project – told by Martens “A bit like the gothic cathedrals and the Flemish atmosphere of Bruges” – is enriched with accessories capable of attracting attention.

The most eye-catching – and Instagram feeds – were the middle finger earrings: maxi pendants that oscillate, to her ears as well as to him, creating an enchanting swing, almost hypnotic, certainly provocative.

It is impossible not to think about the Finger by Maurizio Cattelanobserving the big hands with metallic reflections clenched in a fist and with a single finger reaching towards the sky, and we are sure that the Belgian designer must have in mind the work of the Italian artist placed in the center of Piazza Affari in Milan, provocatively placed in front of Palazzo Mezzanotte, seat of the Stock Exchange.

(Photo by Pietro D’Aprano / Getty Images)

Pietro D’Aprano / Getty Images

May his be pure divertissement with surreal tones or a message to the fashion world, it doesn’t matter. What is certain is that this creative from Bruges is succeeding, show after show, collection after collection, in the enterprise of expressing the spirit of the times, and in this way influencing the collective imagination and taste.

He does it with his work, with the collections for Y / Projectwhich he has been driving since 2013, in collaboration with Jean-Paul Gaultier – for which he designed the collection of haute couture last January – and now also with Dieselof which he has been creative director since the end of 2020. Hers is a conceptual and at the same time commercial fashion, an avant-garde aesthetic but not niche, as Vanessa Friedman put it in the New York Times. Bewitching, desired, in one word influential, Mr. Martens is unstoppable.