Y/Project, he said, “existed for so many years to do this experimental design and quirky things and nobody cared. He had two chains around his neck, a hoop earring in his ear and two rings on his fingers, and he was half shaven. He was wearing his usual uniform: an old black sweater he had bought from an outlet in London, black denim jeans and a faded baseball cap. “A lot of what we do is for the sake of pushing limits, and a lot of people in the past were like, ‘Why?’” He was talking about Y/Project and Zooming in via video from his Y/Project office in Paris. Martens, 38, said a few weeks before the Diesel show. “We never preached that we’re going to make beautiful silhouettes,” Mr.

But now that everyone is finally watching, what does he do next? Too Weird, Too Much Martens was named president of the fashion jury for the 37th edition of the Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography, the Cannes Film Festival of fashion prizes, his metamorphosis from genius weirdo into industry Olympian seemed complete. Martens is not the first designer to try his hands at multiple brands simultaneously (currently Jonathan Anderson with JW Anderson and Loewe and Raf Simons with his own brand and Prada are among those doing double duty), but he may be the first to embrace such seemingly disparate houses to equal acclaim.

Then, three weeks after that, came Diesel, with its 1,000 forms of denim: tufted, frayed, collaged, chromed, recycled, reinvented. The following week came his first-ever couture collection as the guest designer for Jean Paul Gaultier, complete with ball gowns so voluminous they resembled frothing seas and mermaid dresses made from shredded strips of silk ribbon, like a never-ending corset. 19, there was a joint men’s and women’s show for Y/Project, the cult French brand he took over in 2013, featuring net tank tops and skirts and trousers silk-screened with male and female torsos and groins matched up seemingly randomly, in a not-so-random commentary on the wider conversation around gender and identity.

Diesel the brave one