Rick Owens. Menswear Spring 2022

Rick Owens Lido di Venzai home away from his usual Parisian abode, has been the avant-garde designers’s self induced COVID-19 lockdown that has lasted almost a full year, to which he has been able to present three complete crowdless runway shows plus a lookbook presentation which I have reviewed, please refer to this link of the show coverage.    For Owens 4th and final show on the foreshore of the famous Venetian beach, the darkness and gothic overtures of the previous Lido di Venzai presentations for his 2020 and 2021 collections has all but been tampered down, with Europe slowly recovering, although scarred psychologically and sociologically from the pandemic that has devastated the Northern Hemisphere, it is now reaching a point where the lockdowns can be eased as the vaccinations for the first strain of the virus are indeed working, there is a need for a refreshing start, possibly even a celebration.  Although, this may occur metaphorically rather than in any tangible excess of crowd jubilation – these are hard lessons, hopefully, learned when Europe hastily opening the gates of its bungled ‘all clear’ on the 1st and 2nd wave of the virus, forcing winter lockdowns in the latter part of 2020.  In this prelude of a 2021 summer, I suspect that not only governments are being cautions this time, but so are the populous.  But, it is hard to say. Human temperament being what it is and a new virus which is not at all concerned with seasons, social and economic or political wrangling.  It does what it does best.

Still, with Owens exploration of the dark caverns of humanity or what can be classified as the dark shadows of our personality in a Jungian perspective, the last three collections certainly fitted the bill reiterating Owens career ethic of the subversive, yet in a society that has been floored by a paramedic, that for the most part we did not see coming – the reality of a darker resonance that Owens expressed with his Lido di Venzai shows may hold a deeper resonance within all of our psychology.   As the world moves out of a global pandemic into the shadows of the possibility that this virus may morph into a newer and deadly strain, maybe, in a philosophical sense is how we adjust to nature but seeing it as a living entity that holds an indifference to the human race.   And there is of course the ultimate question of our own disposition within the fabric of life.   Is humanity indifferent to its own nature? 

Paris runways shows will be returning in July 2021 starting with Couture and in September as a full schedule, Owens seems, like other designers, to be in preparation for an upcoming showcase of a grand display. Emerging his Spring 2022 collection from the darkness, the rawness of the beach setting is still evident, yet the styles, as opposed to his Fall collections have been stripped back, reinvigorated and stylized in similarity to his Spring 2021 lookbook set before the Lido di Venzai shows at Owens’s Venice factory.   Which ironically Owens, at the time, played around with theme of Greek mythology re: his phrasing of “Phlegethon” in naming the 2021 collection, to which COVID-19 has now been denoted to the Greek alphabet in its characterization, while everyone is watching this, possibly vaccine resistant, Delta strain.  Despite the festive impression of Owens’s latest collection, the survivalist and its rugged attributes remain.

Creamy whites, salamander orange with dark gray and blacks, the color palette stays within in Owens neutrality of tonals, relying on Owens simpler and more defined styles for 2021, the kneehigh boots ala the late Larry LeGaspi’s 1975-1977 “KISS” styles have been cut down to below the knee, keeping in line with the collection’s more sleeker looks, there are Japanese mid weight denim pieces intermixed with sheer styles, with an overall flowing spiritualistic aspect to Owens Spring 2022 collection, to which the designer has been flirting with for many years now.    Also noted is Owens experimentation  with Jewelry accessories, which I adore, as seen at his 2020 Spring show in Paris in 2019, further accentuating his 2022 ceremonial robe like styles.

In a Zennist pose I ask.  Are we at the beginning or the end?    

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