Is Rick Owens a covert Mariah Carey fan? You may scoff, but backstage at his winter 2017 show the title writ large above the looks was “GLITTER”. Immediately you thought of the ill-fated album, or perhaps the film dubbed one of the worst ever to be released. Personally, we’re fans of both – and they seem right up Rick Owens’ alley, as he adores anything disaffected, maligned and generally unloved. And the down-stuffed filets bound around the body were, in an abstract sense, akin to Mariah’s late-nineties attire. But maybe that’s a free association too far. This Rick Owens show was, he said, about positivity, about looking towards a bright future rather than something dark and dismal. And there was a new bravado to the way Owens wrapped fabric flamboyantly around his models bodies, trailing stoles like Gypsy Rose Lee mid-striptease. Maybe, again, that’s a bit of a tall order to see. But anyway, the show looked amazing. It certainly made us feel positive – if not about the state of the world, at least about the state of fashion.
Photographs by Jason Lloyd-Evans
