Glenn Martens, the 33-year-old Belgian creative director of Y/Project, looks a bit like a mysterious, modern-day pirate. “It’s really important that you have fun wearing your clothes,” he told me while reclining on a terrace in Paris’ 10th arrondissement. “Why shouldn’t we have fun?’
The designer practices what he preaches. When I met Martens, who was a finalist in this year’s LVMH Prize, he was wearing black-and-brown striped pants with rolled cuffs, a denim shirt layered over a white tee, black trainers, black socks, and little round sunglasses that looked like something out of the ’90s. Dark roots peeked through his bleached hair, and an ornate earring dangled from his right lobe. It’s an antique accouterment from 1906, and belonged to his great grandmother, who received it on her first communion. He’s worn it every day since the age of 25, when he graduated from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied fashion. “It’s about being flexible,” he said of both his personal and professional style. “And being able to own every situation. That’s what I try to do with my collections. I don’t want to question how I’m going to wear it. I can clean it up and go to a cocktail on the Champs-Élysées, and afterward, I can mess it up a bit, it becomes complete trash, and I can go to a rave.” Martens admits that, these days, he doesn’t have much time to do the latter, but on the rare occasion that he’s able to party all night, he does it “very well.”