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The super-slender silhouettes of the models walking the Rick Owens spring-summer 2024 fashion show were both ethereal and disturbing. As the designer observed from backstage, even portlier people could work the season’s elongated look: those pants sat high to create a center-point at the base of the sternum, north of the paunch. His simultaneously ancient and futuristic Italian-crafted riff on Victorian stricture, structure, and suture – those hard shoulders against the coiling soft folds of draped silk organza – contrasted with a more primitive habit: goth-phase Flintstones fare. There were high top versions of his leg-brace boots and “brutalist concrete sandals.” The parade of statuesque, elegant goths was accompanied by abrupt fireworks, detonated from towering rigs set in the Palais de Tokyo pool. The eruptions filled the space with swirls of purple and yellow smoke. The smell of cordite was in the air. Ash rained down (reportedly, one of the editors’ brand new bag got irrevocably stained). The scene seemed simultaneously apocalyptic and ecstatic. That’s how Owens feels lately. “Maybe it’s just to celebrate while we can. Is that what people are feeling?” Arguably, the designer was having his cake and eating it; yet this was mindful consumption, contradiction with a cause, fashion with a profound position.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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