Rick Owens. MENSWEAR Spring 2023 - Paris Fashion Week

(Rick Owens 2022)

Rick Owens doomsday fetish continues onward, which have always been the template for the once Los Angeles resident, now over twenty years since he and his wife Michèle Lamy, relocated to Paris, Owens has maintained his avant-garde mix of gloom and excess.  After two decades of imprinting himself to be that most recognizable of independent fashion designers, Owens with his signature label, has not relented on its uniqueness over the years, rather he has solidified his heretical claim to fame.  And as noted with my reviews of Owens Venice shows, which were staged on the beach of Libo throughout the pandemic of 2020, in the shadow of a micro organism that caused so much social turmoil in the world.  Owens chose to reiterate the bleakness, by further asserting his darkened gothic overtures, throughout the viral contagion as a resonance to Owens's cultish end-of-days ambience.   

Yet, beyond any fetish of the end-of-days, is more of a realization that doomsday, by manifestation, is inevitable, drawing from monotheistic religious such as Islam, Judaism and Christianity that humanity, once we repent all our sins, will ascend into a heavenly realm or go to hell.  Yet, it is Eastern religions such as tantric Hinduism and esoteric Buddhism they view see life, death, destruction and rebirth all as the same cyclical realization.   To break the cycle of suffering and the affliction of materialism, is ultimately to be the free from the bête noir of life. 

Could doomsday be a metaphor for change?   Since everything is going to end anyway, what not embrace the end while creating  the beginning, within that moment.  Regardless of philosophical and religious believes, doomsday could already be thrusted upon us regardless by Nature and the pandemic could be the first sign that we, as a biological species walking the Earth, are in trouble.  

Owens Spring 2023 showing, using his stalwart backdrop of the Palais De Tokyo in all of its art deco grandeur, keeps in lock step within the monolithic and tomb like atmosphere of the 1930's façade,  that has indeed reflected a many of Rick Owens themes of life and death, destruction and rebirth.  Utilizing  three metallic flaming orbs hoisted into the air via a mechanical crane, as the models walk around the ceremonial  fountain area of the Palais De Tokyo, each orb was dropped into the water and its flames extinguished.   Explained by Owens that each spherical represents a burning Earth, as it repeats the cycle of destruction and creation.

As noted with Owens Fall 2022 collection, apart from the crack of doom cult appeal, there has been a sleeker bondage feel deriving from his recent styles, incorporating his mythical doom and cult like fixtures over the last two years.  Although with is Spring 2023 the apocalyptic tuning is certainly in place, however the sadomasochistic aspects have been toned down.   The styles seem to implore Owens's earlier collections of utility and combat attire, with its rugged appeal, yet also offering delicate stylizations to his latest array, as he has collaborated with the Parisian avant-garde label Paradoxe. Renown for recycling denim and re-stitching strands into a lace like fabrics.  The overall collection reminds me of his Spring 2017 and Fall 2018 show when Owens's gothic combat styles merged with his disco glam looks.

The Spring 2023 collection was titled "Edfu", as Owens had just recently returned from Egypt after visiting the Ptolemaic Temple of Horus. to which I will end this review with this quote from Aldous Huxley's 1956 book Heaven and Hell:

"These great monoliths were quarried in Upper Egypt, were floated in barges down the Nile, were towed across the Mediterranean to Byblos or Tripolis and thence were hauled, by oxen, mules and men, uphill to Homs, and from Homs southward to Baalbek, or east, across the desert, to Palmyra. What a labour of giants! And, from the utilitarian point of view, how marvellously pointless!"  

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