Rick Owens. Fall 2022 RTW - Paris Fashion Week
As noted in my Fall 2022 review, Rick Owens is a designer with a unique gift. Able to be inspired by his own backlog of creations since his first showing at New York Fashion Week in 2002, Owens has an aptitude in constantly redefining his signature brand. Sound paradoxical? Because it is, as a shrewd street guy, he has been to turn over a new look every season, that by its definition is on par with the same stylizations that occurred almost two decades prior. And, if the devil-is-in-the-details, it would be the very slight tweaks of fabrics and accessories that assist in newer collections looking fresh and innovative. The skills in achieving this technique of 'here and now' creations, within its bracket of time, are a honed and polished affair. No many, say, traditionally taught fashion designers have that nous, it takes a type of unorthodox characteristic, which Owens has, that very few creatives possess.
Since returning to Paris after spending, with his wife Michèle Lamy, a good portion of the global pandemic in Lido, Venice. Owen's return to the runway began with his very cult like and doomish men's collection, which was a spill over from the women's collections that he presented in Lido, all manifested a visual decree of a cultish overture, more so the women's styles which reflected a oracle like presence amongst a pandemic that showed no signs of abating at the height of 2020 and 2021. Now, although the virus continues to mutate, another event which has taken hold over the world, is the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Maybe Owens's Lido oracles were warning us in 2020, that we could be a cycle of tumultuousness, that human overconfidence and belief in the utopian is all but a fabrication - and that the dark should be faced to understand the light. We're all about to face a new Cold War.
Fashion Weeks continued on when the pandemic hit Europe, although there were many misfires and irresponsible aspects from certain designers in between lockdowns and sporadic opening in hope of the economic all clear, it was a mess before the widespread vaccinations took place, Owens, was one of the responsible ones, holding his shows as crowdless displays on the Lido foreshore, the themes that were devised have returned to his beloved Palais de Tokyo tomb like interiors.
The gothic, oracle cult fixtures remain for Owens's latest Ready-to-Wear collection, softening its imprint, yet the strobe lighting effect and smoke machines keep the solemn and ambrosial oculist aspects alive. Very much like Pythia who was the Oracle of Delphi, the 8th Century priestess, who foretold prophecies, apparently high on the fumes of dried Oleander flowers, which were burnt, while the smoke drifted upward, beneath a chasm in the ground where the Oracle sat. Which, in an interestingly connexion, Owens, did induce the crowd in attendance with a scent, via the smoke machines, which was his collaboration with Aesop. Although there may not have been widespread hallucinations, Owens Fall 2022 captures the aesthetics of calamity in all of its glory.
The collection holds a sleeker more defined projection, but the fusion of modernist and avant-garde looks with Owens personal reworking of 1970's and 1980's excesses, keeps it aligned to his enduring mystique. That of recently appears, deliberately messy. With smoke machines billowing out and models walking through the mist, Owens's contrarian stylizations are on display, but it is seems like it wants to be hidden, within the darkness. Noted with his last showing, Owens covered himself completely with one of his outfits, as with this showing, he appears at the end through the smoke and gloom as a shadow. Barely visible. So the question is: Is he imposing himself onto the stygian, or is the opacity, which is absorbing him?
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All prior Rick Owens reviews:
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