Glenn Martens to Head Fashion Jury at 2022 Hyères Festival – WWD

PARIS — Glenn Martens, creative director of Y/Project and Diesel, has been chosen as president of the fashion jury at the 37th edition of the Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography.

The announcement was made at 19M, Chanel’s recently inaugurated hub for specialty crafts, on Friday evening, “a building…that symbolizes the love for métiers d’art and fashion,” said festival founder and general director Jean-Pierre Blanc.

“I wanted to say how honored and proud I am to be here. Years ago, when a young [person] chose handcraft, parents, families felt desperation [that] they didn’t follow the honorable path,” said festival president Pascale Mussard, adding that 19M was especially important to “the intelligence of the hand” at a time where “nearly everything can be done virtually or industrially.”

The accessories jury will be led by Aska Yamashita, the artistic director of Chanel-owned embroidery workshop Atelier Montex, while Belgian visual artist Pierre Debusschere, who has worked with the likes of Raf Simons and Beyoncé, will head the one for photography.

Considered a major launchpad for fashion designers, the festival is scheduled for Oct. 14 to 16, having moved to this fall slot in 2021 due to pandemic-related disruptions. Instagram is joining the festival’s partners as of this edition.

This year’s exhibition at the modernist Villa Noailles in Hyères will be designed by Paris-based interior architects Marc-Antoine Biehler and Amaury Graveleine, who won the Visual Merchandising Prize awarded by Chanel at the 2021 Design Parade Toulon interior design festival, also led by Blanc.

Martens will be able to count on Ottolinger’s Christa Bösch and Cosima Gadient; singer and composer Max Colombie; Antwerp-based visual artist Frederik Heyman; Tiffany Hsu, vice president of women’s wear and kids’ wear buying at Mytheresa, and Vogue France’s head of editorial content Eugénie Trochu as members of the fashion jury. Per tradition, last year’s Première Vision Grand Prize winner, British designer Ifeanyi Okwuadi, also will join the fashion jury.

“We wanted a very versatile [selection], with strong focuses, to ensure that we have a representation of what is happening in fashion among younger generations,” Martens said, adding that selecting 10 profiles out a total of 37 candidates had led to “big debates” earlier in the day.

The 10 finalists of 2022 are Valentin Lessner (Germany), Sini Saavala (Finland), Antonia Schreiter (Germany), Jenny Hytönen (Finland), Alice Habran Jensen (France/Denmark), Juha Vehmaanperä (Finland), Pris Niinikoski (Finland), Lora Sonney (France), Tim Suessbauer (Germany), and the duo of Fernando Miró and Alizée Loubet (Brazil).

They will be competing for the Première Vision Grand Prize, the main fashion prize; the 19M Chanel Métiers d’Art prize; the Chloé prize, and the award for sustainable design introduced last year.

New this season is a prize created under the stewardship of Chanel and supported by the “Atelier des Matières,” a social and environmental responsibility initiative, to give new life to unused materials and unsold finished merchandise, which is deconstructed to be reused in new items.

It was inspired by the “Bal des Matières” thrown by Marie-Laure de Noailles, who invited their guests to come dressed in “anything but usual garment fabrics,” said designer Alexandre Blanc.

The designer who wins this prize will get access to a selection of fabrics and leathers worth 10,000 euros.

Since its creation in 1985, the Hyères festival has helped raise the profiles of talents such as Viktor & Rolf; Saint Laurent artistic director Anthony Vaccarello; Paco Rabanne’s Julien Dossena, and Rushemy Botter and Lisi Herrebrugh, who design men’s label Botter.

Tasked with evaluating this year’s belt challenge put to the accessories designers are Mathieu Bassée, creative director of the Studio MTX embroidery specialist; Alexandre Blanc; Eloi Chafaï, designer and cofounder of Normal Studio; Émilie Hammen, director of the Chanel et le 19M research chair on fashion savoir-faire at the Institut Français de la Mode; artist Gianpaolo Pagni, and lingerie designer Yasmine Eslami, as well as last year’s winner, jeweler Capucine Huguet.

To help select the year’s winning image, Debusschere can count on Maison Alaïa’s Pieter Mulier; Pauline de Montferrant, digital creative director for perfume and beauty at Chanel; as well as gallery director Lucy Chadwick, studio manager Rebecca Cuglietta, photographer Carljin Jacobs, curator Evelyn Simons, and 2021 winners Emma Charrin and Olivier Muller.

Martens, who just presented Y/Project’s fall 2022 line and the one-off couture collection he designed for Jean Paul Gaultier, will present an all-gender wardrobe for Diesel’s fall 2022 show, slated for 1 p.m. CET on Feb. 23 during Milan Fashion Week.

He said finalists will have a further six months to develop their collections, working with Chanel’s specialist métiers d’art specialist. “It’s a luxury to be able to reflect in fashion, where everything goes so fast, one collection after the next,” said Martens, encouraging finalists to “reconnect to the essence of their message.”

“We’re speaking of dreams and beauty but what is beautiful is that in all this is that [these younger generations] fundamentally include ethically correct messages,” Martens said. “That’s cool.”