Rick Owens. Spring 2021 RTW (reviewed: A.Glass 1st October 2020)
Rick Owens, has, in comparison to other fashion designers, taken his quarantine or lockdown into a more dramatic aspect. Holed up in his home away from Paris, that being in Venice’s Lido and its famous beach, close to his factory, where Owens has been spending most of his time, socially distant from the associated fashion weeks. Which is understandable. With the second wave of COVID-19 well and truly impacting Europe, France, more so Paris, London and Barcelona (again), designers are either stripping down the collections back to minimal lookbook affairs or not showing at all and in some case clinging to the old normal, with attempts to stage runway presentations. This virus is merciless and it loves crowds, yet its impact and pattern of discourse has been seen in the many centuries that plagues and viruses have come and gone. Old Europe holds a resonance, its history is one of bloody and tumultuous foundation, in Chinese Buddhist esoteric beliefs, there are the Hungry Ghosts, which one could see as a metaphor, that these spectras still restlessly wander. Perturbed and in turmoil. Never to rest. Without appeasement, we, the living absorb their suffering. The cycle remains, the hell state is maintained. Such is history repeating.
And it is Owens, for his Spring 2021 collection which he has also evoked in historical contexts, from his press notes the Thomas Mann’s 1912 Novella, Death in Venice, as a seminal base, in introspection of his latest array. Like past collections, Ownes has been able to set precision themes as a template, that I never seen achieved like any other designer, truly a unique trait in drawing an inspiration and reconfiguring into his own tangible guide. To which “Death in Venice”, fits the criteria. The obsession with youth, as one gets older, in which the main character Gustav von Aschenbach, who as a troubled writer, is impressed with the beauty of Polish boy whilst he resides in Venice to rest. It is a story of self absorbed vanity and the crushing burden of trying to remain young in appearance, the narcissism of youth is all but fleeting, which, the writer of the story, also instills the panic of a cholera epidemic sweeping Venice. The protagonist suffers to the end, unable to fulfill his fixation by changing his appearance and dying his hair, in hope of reciprocating the same desire from the youth. In the end, he dies from cholera on Lido beach. Owens maybe setting a precedence in an autobiography sense.
The collection was held at the former casino, the Palazzo Del Casino in Lido, on the beach front overlooking the Adriatic sea, for the first time, since Owens moved to Paris in 2012, he has shown in Italy. The 1930’s art deco structure, replacing his stalwart Palais de Tokyo setting, is now the new backdrop. Filmed and presented without an audience, sans the runaway models and the skeleton crew assisting with the production.
Continuing with the running theme from the men’s Spring 2021 collection, of Phlegethon, the river of fire in Hades that burns, but does not consume. Owens awareness, as a designer, of the hell state that is now the world – yet hell is also, paradoxically, very personal, so the collection is vastly more darker and apocalyptic than his previous showings of late. Returning the Ready-to-Wear styles to their Gothic and dystopic stylizations, but with a renewed vigor.
It is certainly one the toughest and most challenging Owens collections to date, thigh high leather boots, draped avant-garde aesthetics, models wearing face masks, both as an acceptance and defiance. It has a warrior pose, clad in Owens layered styles. Mostly black and white, achromatic as a base, with pink, which works so well against black as a darker hue, also seen are the slightness of reds with green yellows. Ensuring that it is the most crafted ensemble I’ve seen from him in a long time, a true return to form, which he is renown for. Allowing his personal edge to be amplified, lockdown or not, runway crowd or none, the impact lies in its resolution.
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