Excerpt: RICK OWENS FALL 2023 - PARIS FASHION WEEK

"I've been thinking about Rick Owens Lido, Venice shows that were held at the height of the pandemic in 2020, particularly when Paris became the epicenter of the COVID break out.   And Owens and his wife Michèle Lamy retreated to the famous Venice foreshore to which I covered Owens's collections that took place on Lido beach, seeing how doomdayish, more so the women's styles were.  Aware that Owens is no stranger to the darker, avant-garde of aesthetics, what struck me in regards to Owens 2020 and 2021 collections was the imprint of his cultish manifestations in representing the oracle, that is of the feminine.  When in meditation, holds an intrinsic ability of intuition, heightened when it is graced by manifestations of the occult.   She becomes the harbinger of doom, which would be prudent to learn from its instinctive realm.  To be aware of the folly of our making, within an unforgiving universe.  Yes, we are certainly living in dark times, despite our technological prowess our fraught conditioning and overconfidence is probably going to be our downfall.

Intermixed with Owens witch like oracle collections over the said period, was his men's styles, that offered a more blunt and aggressive take on the masculine, during the pandemic period of 2020/2021 and then with his Spring 2022 men's collection, which was the final of the Lido beachfront shows, paradoxically became a liberating and positive showpiece as Owens's stint in Venice was coming to end and he and Lamy were to return to their home in Paris..."

Full review: https://chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/2023/01/rick-owens-fall-2023-paris-fashion-week.html 

(A.Glass 2023)