EXCERPT: RICK OWENS. MENSWEAR SPRING 2023 - PARIS FASHION WEEK

 

"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..."  

___

Full review:  https://chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/2022/06/rick-owens-menswear-spring-2023-paris.html

(A.Glass 2022)