Rick Owens doesn’t put on underwear.
It’s, he stated, the Californian in him. By no means thoughts that Mr. Owens, 63, has lived in Paris for a lot of his grownup life. That coastal breeziness is tough to shake.
“I simply put on socks and shorts,” the designer stated in his still-intact Cali drawl after his males’s runway present right here on Thursday.
Why precisely was Mr. Owens mentioning his unmentionables? To make a degree about this dazzling assortment, one which noticed him stripping issues again. (That’s strip again, not strip down, people. Backstage, he was modestly cloaked in a sharp-shouldered topcoat and sprawling leather-based pants that wrinkled round his boots like a Shar-Pei’s mug.)
“This was a fundamentals present,” Mr. Owens stated. It opened with a set of lengthy johns and unfurled into melton coats and spartan white hoodies. Fundamentals, proper?
Effectively, to somebody who has by no means witnessed Mr. Owens’s intergalactic gothic wizardry, these can be some fairly unorthodox fundamentals. Sure, the zip-front melton overcoats have been subdued (that is govt put on, Owens model), however leather-based jackets got here scrunched to the navel, and people lengthy johns have been paired with a pecs-high crop high, revealing the strapping physique of Mr. Owens’s muse, the mannequin Tyrone Dylan Susman.
“A fantastic physique continues to be extra thrilling than costly garments,” stated Mr. Owens, a devoted gymgoer. (In one other life, Mr. Owens might have given Billy Blanks, the Tae Bo man, a run for his cash. “If I might get washboard abs, anyone might,” Mr. Owens stated. “I swear! As a result of I’m only a lazy pig.” This critic, who has been surviving on pomme frites and croissants for the previous week, started to really feel mighty insufficient.)
Different ingenious Owens thrives would have been fundamental solely on the planet Zod, like a white hoodie bearing the feel of fossilized duct tape and boots with undulating strands throughout, calling to thoughts swooshing carwash brushes.
“I would like refinement and ease, however I would like moments of insanity, too,” Mr. Owens stated. You need mad? Peep his earlobe-kissing jacket collars, which he referred to as “DRACUCOLLARED” in his present notes. (Mr. Owens, on high of all the things else, writes some splendidly Seussian information releases.)
“I all the time love that heavy-metal Dracula glamour,” he stated. Tilted up, the erect collars gave the fashions the picture of Bela Lugosi attending a Kiss live performance. However the designer assured me that when folded down, “they find yourself trying type of regular.”
Regular, although, shouldn’t be what Owens shoppers craze. The disciples who fill his exhibits, pulling out their most beloved Owens innovations, are proof of this.
Within the entrance row of this one sat the British singer FKA Twigs, in a languid leather-based jacket and thigh-high brown boots, and the star Owens shopper Dave Chappelle, in a swaddling sleeveless puffer and black leather-based flares. (There’s something curious in that, as Mr. Chappelle has develop into ever extra polarizing, he has began to decorate just like the frontman of a German nu-metal group.)
However the true flashes of brilliance could be discovered within the standing part. There you may spot the die-hards with mutant puffers worming round their shoulders like air-conditioning tubes, ethereal mohair sweaters and Tractor Boots with soles the dimensions of G.M.O. baguettes. I zeroed in on a fleet of 20-something males in broccoli-top hairdos carrying matching black Owens jackets and variations of his muscular sneakers. They bounced round giddily ready for the present to begin.
It’s pleased converts like these, already acquainted with the alien extremes of Rick Owens’s output, for whom the so-called fundamentals he offered will actually be simply that.
