On October 17, H&M unveiled its latest designer collaboration: Glenn Martens × H&M, a collection created with one of the most talked-about Belgian designers of our time, Glenn Martens. Currently at the creative helm of Y/Project, Diesel, and newly Maison Margiela, Martens has reconstructed H&M’s archival bestsellers and merged them with his own distinctive design codes to create what he calls “a new kind of classic.”
Playfulness Between Avant-Garde and Everyday Life
Throughout his career, Glenn Martens has used experimentation and humor as his driving forces to overturn conventional notions of fashion. At Y/Project, he masterfully blended avant-garde expression with wearability; at Diesel, he transformed denim into a cultural symbol; and at Maison Margiela, he continues to explore fashion as an evolving conceptual language.
At the core of his aesthetic lies transformation and duality. His work balances structure with softness, eccentricity with refinement, and intellect with emotion. For Martens, fashion is a field where reason and feeling intersect—a living, breathing form of expression that never ceases to evolve. To him, garments are not static creations but “living entities” that adapt, transform, and grow alongside the wearer.
A Contemporary Take on British Heritage
In this collection, traditional British elements are reimagined through Martens’s signature perspective. Tartan checks, Scottish knits, rich tweeds, and boiled wool coats—classically British materials—are re-edited through a lens of modern construction and unexpected detailing. From afar, the pieces appear timeless and aristocratic, yet up close they reveal a world entirely their own, marked by Martens’s signature sculptural twist.
“I tried to get an aristocratic, British vibe into the collection based on shapes, fabrics and archetypes,” Martens explains. “From afar you might say, ok this is a really classic tweed jacket. But once you have it in your hands, you can see that it is completely from a different world.”
A “Fashion Family” Fit for Royal Portraiture
The campaign visuals bring this eccentric vision to life with a playful reinterpretation of a royal family portrait. British icons Joanna Lumley and Richard E. Grant appear as the matriarch and patriarch of an imagined fashion family, joined by models Clym Evernden, Audrey Marnay, Jum Kuochnin, Heather Diamond Strongarm, and Clara Denison as the “teenagers.” Together, they parody the grandeur of 19th-century aristocratic portraits with a witty, modern twist.
“I see the collection as a big family of garments,” says Martens. “All of which have multiple purposes and personalities: like people, they grow and change each day. I am always interested in the clothes that we really live in: and the idea of archetypes and wardrobe staples was the starting point for this very special and joyful project with H&M.”
The H&M × Glenn Martens Collection will be available in select stores and on hm.com from October 30, 2025. The collection features a total of 57 pieces, including sculptural denim, intricately braided and deconstructed knits, delicately printed dresses, reengineered trench coats, theatrical jewelry, and transformable bags — a lineup that fuses playfulness with architectural elegance.
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