Rick Owens. Women's Fall 2025 - Paris Fashion Week

Rick Owens "Conconcians" discodia theme from the Fall 2025 men's showing, revealed at his beloved Palais de Tokyo, continues to paradoxically imprint, within its orchestrated chaotic fusion, over two decades of Owens runway shows.  And masterfully, he's been able to invoigrate his benchmark dark resolve, with over 20 years of Paris fashion weeks under his belt, which have very much fluctuated and weaved throughout Owens rise to fame timeline, with the 2020 pandemic possibly being a turning point, when Owens wife Michèle Lamy and himself retreated into the mist of Libo, Venice's 'nebbia'.  While echoing its past resonation, via the late American Russian poet Joseph Brodsky's ode on what isolation from the famous Venetian fog can do to the human mind, more so the creative, and according to Brodsky it can be bliss.

Which can be seen in the use of smoke machines and those doomsdayism processions, which I deemed from the Lido 2020 shows, as Owens 'Oracle' witches, or Sibyls of Doom, warned that the pandemic was just the beginning of the end, and to be prudent, she asks that the arrogance of humanity be kept in check.  A backstory, which I personally felt represented the apocalyptical overtures of Owens 2020 and 2021 women's collections on Lido beach, before he returned to Paris in 2021.  Yet, Owens holding his shows within and outside the Palais de Tokyo, after briefly staging a handful of showings at his home in Paris, the monolith 1930s Art Deco structure representing Owens tomb like fixation, has ensured that the collections have become darker and a lot more brooding.  And dare I say, with a vampiric appeal?

The mythos of the vampire has ensured for Centuries, akin to selling your soul to the devil, for that thirst of immortality, fame and riches. But, it comes with a curse, a burden.   And for the gothic vampire, it is the sunlight, and to be forever hidden in the darkness.  Where it controls the stygian realm, until dawn, thus retreating back into its entombed enclosure.  Is Owens doing the same?  The 2024 and 2025 shows have certainly, as mentioned, become a lot more darker and entombed, whilst  hidden behind waves of Owens's own smokey 'nebbia'.  With the soulless, light absorbing black contact lenses worn by the models, seen as another Owens fixation after returning to Paris from Libdo in 2021.

For Owens's Fall 2025 women's collection, it is mostly a leather affair, in his recent collaboration with the luxury luggage brand Rimowa, which are now all sold out, inspiring some of the more rugged jackets and skirts.  Also noted is Owens fetish esque wears of latex and leathers, overlaid with some beautifully intricate denim pattern work.  Despite its vampire styled and bondage wears, Owens has also incorporated a worn torn look to some of the pieces, in similarity to the early Avant-garde styles of twenty years ago, be it that stylized aesthetic of  the weather beaten leather look.

It appears that Owens Oracles of Doom are now manifesting into vampiric overlords, as they pick at the corpse of a self destructive humanity.

A bleakly styled and uncompromising collection, from one of the last of the independent fashion designers.

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(A.Glass 2025)