Nobody does a big shoulder like Rick Owens. Not speaking of silhouettes that completely elevate the wearer, making them look like goddesses and gods. In a season in which fashion has often come up short against growing coronavirus anxiety, Owens made it look easy. “It’s a collection about play,” he said backstage. “I see myself balancing out a world that can be kind of very strict in its aesthetics. There have to be people like me that have other suggestions.”Among those he had for autumn-winter 2020 were the above mentioned shoulders so peaked on a leather moto jacket, and so “monstrous” on puffer coats and pilled knits, that they grazed the earlobes, and recycled plastic platform boots that inched up near the hips. The one-leg Kansai Yamamoto by way of David Bowie jumpsuits that made such a major impact at Owens’s men’s show a month ago were transformed here into clingy dresses whose asymmetrical hems curved around the models’ legs as they slinked. Owens also has floor-sweeping sleeping bag capes in black, sky blue and silver for all the cosmic empresses out there. Out of this world!
Collage by Edward Kanarecki.