New Diesel Red Tag GR-Uniforma Collection

Image Credit: Diesel

Diesel’s Red Tag’s latest collaboration with GR-UNIFORMA—the new, multi-media project-based label from Moscow-born Gosha Rubchinskiy—was unveiled on May 18, 2019 in Berlin. The collection features over 50 pieces, which cohere to create a distinct new expression and language, as captured by the clothing and the launch performance.

DIESEL RED TAG is an incubative platform conceived to host the new generation of disruptive designers who interpret the brand’s DNA by creating capsule collections distributed at selected retailers worldwide. DIESEL RED TAG debuted in 2018 with a first edition by Shayne Oliver of Hood By Air, followed by the contribution of Glenn Martens of Y/Project.

Rubchinskiy is well-known for his utility and streetwear designs largely influenced by Russian culture. He brings that sensibility to the DIESEL RED TAG x GR-UNIFORMA collection, creating a series of pseudo-uniforms for a theoretical “Opera.”

“Denim is an important part of the wardrobe of youth today,” said Rubchinskiy. “I remember myself as a teenager in the late Nineties and it was the same. It was the time of Diesel’s first bright and strong advertising campaigns, and the brand’s first shop in Moscow. It was a dream for me to own Diesel denims. Now dreams have come true!”

With an anchor inspiration in the early 20th-century Russian avant-garde moments and movements—including references to the multi-hyphenate artists El Lissitzky and Kazimir Malevich, the theater director and producer Vsevolod Meyerhold, and the musical pioneering of Igor Stravinsky—the collection takes cues from Russia’s vast and formidable cultural background and adds a contemporary layer through silhouettes based on workwear and Nineties-era denim shapes.

Denim—which is always Diesel’s core element—appears with ombré gradients, or striking and angular patchwork treatments, on jackets, boiler-suits and trousers. A principal color-scheme of black, white and red is central, though other hues appear, too. There are aspects of utility-sportswear —including boxing shorts and tank-tops— visible elsewhere, which impart a nostalgic air. Accessories include heavy-duty belting, combining leather and webbing, mid-calf socks embroidered with a specialized DIESEL RED TAG x GR-UNIFORMA logo, and denim-and-canvas sneakers with pronounced gum soles. In total, Rubchinskiy aimed to create a new sort of Gesamtkunstwerk (“total art piece”) in the collection. The reason? Because mixed-media has never been more relevant than now.

To celebrate the collection launch, Gosha Rubchinskiy staged a performative event in Berlin, at the newly-open Diesel pop-up store in Berlin’s Torstraße 67, which became part of a series of events happening in the German capital during the weekend, starting with Reference Berlin, a 24-hour festival “for creativity in the infinite present”. With a program of the fashion, art, design and technology industries’ most exciting talents, the festival leads the way for an evolutionary market shift, and Diesel supported its closing party on the night on May 18.

The RED TAG x GR-UNIFORMA collection will be exclusively sold in selected Diesel stores worldwide and on diesel.com, Dover Street Market stores, Comme des Garcons stores and through a carefully curated network of retailers – including Selfridges in London and KM20 in Moscow – which has been developed by Tomorrow, the business accelerator and partner with Diesel on the RED TAG project.