Rick Owens

Rick Owens‘ latest collection is powerful and beautiful in its strangeness. The bulbous shapes, the rough textures, the elevated silhouettes… “Conditions in the world being the way they are, it’s kind of a delicate time,” the designer said pre-show, alluding to the war in Ukraine. “And I was thinking I wanted to do something earnest, and more formal and more deliberate. I kept thinking of the word exquisite.” In pursuit of the exquisite he leaned into matte sequins, not in the gaudy red carpet colors you associate with embellishments like that, but in more muted tones of lime green, art deco pink, and bordeaux; and not, of course, in the fishtail silhouettes that seem to multiply during awards season, but in those donut duvets and inflated draped miniskirts. Those sequins aside, Owens was working with humble materials. The cutaway skirts that exposed the hip bone on one side and trailed down the runway in a long train on the other, and the dresses sliced to the armpit? Those were ribbed knits made from GRS certified recycled cashmere. And those decaying and fraying half-skirts and coats? That was indigo denim from Japan, which had been treated with a mineral wash and shredded by lasers. Extraordinary effects out of relatively simple materials. “That’s my job,” said Owens, “to present the most excellent aesthetics I can. I know I’m commonly referred to as dark. I think no, I’m just realistic and I’m acknowledging the beauty and horror of the world. There are some people that prefer something more sugar-coated, and that’s fine, I don’t criticize that. But I prefer something with more nuance.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Rick Owens wanted to imbue his latest collection with an “elaborate modesty,” partially drawn from the British queen’s 19th century reign. Said the designer: “It’s a Victorian silhouette. There’s a prudishness. We remember that era so much for suppressing sensuality, but doing it in such an elaborate way that you couldn’t help but think about it.” Cloaks, skirts (some almost pencil), tightly gathered parkas, and voluminous pyramid-paneled shearlings that had a ladylike grandeur, heightened by the handbags, were the chief protagonists in Owens’s pivot to would-be primness. A further act of withdrawal, of self-containment, was played out in the ‘donut’ padded pieces – wearable soft furnishings – into which some models were inserted. “That’s me trying to reduce garments to the simplest shape I could. They’re literally duvet donuts. They’re like the fog machine of clothes – dumb and super-simple.” There was much more in this collection to relish, including many fine denim and cow-hide spike shouldered jackets, and the increasingly amazing pieces that Owens’s team is crafting from pirarucu. Because the runway was raised around a meter or so we got an eyeful of the footwear, which included a powerful new orthopedic variation of his glamorous platform boots. However the central tension rested in Owens’s urge to consider modesty in a collection that was as typically laden with sexuality as ever. There is always a sly irony secreted in this designer’s gothic bombast, a space where he posits questions despite, or more likely because of, the lack of an easy answer. And there is a highly autobiographical element too. He said: “I’m indulging in the exercise of taking my misdirected uncertain youth and reshaping it as a 61 year old man at the height of my powers. Being able to revisit that and create what I wanted life to be then, it’s so fun.” This comment led me to propose that Tyrone Dylan, who has now opened so many of Rick’s shows, has become a sort of personified cipher for Owen’s idealized youth. “Absolutely! Tyrone is like an idealization of that kind of vitality that I don’t think I ever actually really had – although I probably had moments of it. But I’m able to really project it on him. And also, you know, having him open each men’s show it’s sending a message about values; about not having things be so disposable. It’s about loyalty, about family, and about how my personal life is completely connected to what I put out there.”