Rick Owens Spring 2024 - Paris Fashion Week.

Rick Owens cult like oblivion marches on, until it doesn't.   As a long time reviewer of a many of his runway shows over the years, one has to be aware that any crescendo of the Owens template, is also a renewal of his creative prowess.  In its metaphor of death and its rebirth.  Such were his Oracles of Doom, which have been his ready-to-wear collections to date, particularly during and after the COVID-19 pandemic on the beaches of Lido, Venice, and at his beloved tomb like setting of the Palais de Tokyo.  Owens's signature brand is of course his own gothic imprint, honed and crafted since his debut show in New York 2002.  There is no doubting his collections are becoming darker.   

And as noted with my Fall 2023 review, the men's styles are now morphing into his sibyls of the feminine.  Yet, in a clever manner, Owens has ensured that the masculine and the feminine hold a distinctiveness.  As a visual representation of duality, with the subtle fluidity complementing each other within its stygian embrace.  Yes, we are living in very dark times.  

The pandemic changed society and our overconfidence of a technological wonder, has come unhinged.   The human race is at the brink of annihilation.  And at this point in time, our destruction may solely be from our own folly.   With no counter-culture or societal revolution akin to the 1960s and 1970s to guide us out.  We may truly be at our 11th hour.  Is this depressing?  It shouldn't be.  One can see how Owens has forged a cimmerian landscape into his own realm.  Cultivating the artistic drive, so what may seem like a pointless cycle of lethe, that will derive into our inevitable end, can paradoxically, at the same time hold a motivation of purpose.  

And if one is to look back to the COVID-19 lockdowns with a possibility of what could have manifested from a period of retrospection.  We could have developed a meditative insight or pause from our rapid consumption orientated society,  that has commodified every element of its existence through the digital relays.  To which Owens has utilized the smoke machine since his Lido, Venice shows, as a possible representation of the meditative encasement that a fog can create.   And Venice is famous for its fogs, as noted by the late Russian/American poet *Joseph Brodsky in describing a Venetian fog as an almost liberating experience, in its denial of material reflection.   

So, Owens Spring 2024 is indeed that retrospective vision, as his smoke machines begin to engulf the Palais de Tokyo setting, the collection reads, in Owens own words, as a "grim, determined elegance".  Which seems very fitting in its description of a tailored and refined array, as Owens has toned down some of the exaggerated styles as portrayed in prior seasons allowing his latest collection to offer a sleek, yet ominous focus in all of its gracefulness.

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A. Glass (2023)   

* “Local fog in Venice has a name: nebbia. It obliterates all reflections ... and everything that has a shape: buildings, people, colonnades, bridges, statues. Boat services are canceled, airplanes neither arrive, nor take off for weeks, stores are closed and mail ceases to litter one’s threshold. The effect is as though some raw hand had turned all those enfilades inside out and wrapped the lining around the city... the fog is thick, blinding, and immobile... this is a time for reading, for burning electricity all day long, for going easy on self-deprecating thoughts of coffee, for listening to the BBC World Service, for going to bed early. In short, a time for self-oblivion, induced by a city that has ceased to be seen. Unwittingly, you take your cue from it, especially if, like it, you’ve got company. Having failed to be born here, you at least can take some pride in sharing its invisibility...”

Joseph Brodsky, Watermark