His highly-anticipated Maison Margiela Artisanal couture debut lands next month. So Glenn Martens might, perfectly justifiably, have seemed stretched thinner than a pair of undersized Diesel skinny jeans at this presentation. And yet there was no discernible sign of anything but total focus on this pre-spring collection from a designer whose creativity must be shot through with elastane.

“The collection is definitely a continuation of the last show,” he said as we ruffled through the rails. At that show the set was a riot of globally-sourced street art. For this lookbook the background jostled with 100-odd “very cute” onlookers, some from Diesel HQ, and some street cast in its hometown of Breganza.

The lookbook was a more concentrated distillation of Martens’ and his teams’ broader seasonal output than previously, thanks in part to a structural restructuring on the back-end designed to give Diesel’s worldwide network of 5,000-ish points of sale greater autonomy. Dresses, jackets, and outerwear in neoprene were clad in either felted wool or treated denim to create minimized but classic pieces with a grungy facade. Martens cheerily noted that one knit-hooded overcoat was inspired by a Y-project favorite of his own design that he’d decided to keep alive at Diesel. There were high-waisted, low-sleeved leather puffers, and what Martens called “fake tailoring”: pieces in jersey, denim, or more neoprene cut to resemble tailored pieces without quite being so.

Other Martens-ish masquerades included dresses with trompe l’oeil draping, leather blousons overprinted with perfecto trompe l’oeil prints, and a slip dress in shiny organza-ish material, red on silver, that featured a double layered construction at the shoulder that allows the wearer to tweak the neckline in multiple ways. There was a brief aside into preppy pastiche with a big D logo bengal stripe shirt layered over an overprinted henley above distressed bootcut jeans. Tarnished silver taping on crispily treated mesh knits were readymade but looked DIY: another contradiction to play with.

Even edited down, and even with another brand now jostling for its designer’s attention, this Diesel collection was aflame with ideas. Expect Margiela to be explosively so.