A Rick Owens show is a chance to rewire not just recharge the creative brain. For spring, and through a series of billowing coloured smoke clouds, pumped into the air, walked a series of beautiful and architectural, also challenging, new shapes, which will chime with the alternative minds of Owens’ fans. The trouser: a popper-side tracking pant in satin. The poppers left open and flapping around. The shoes: amongst other styles, a Birkenstock collaboration, this on the back of summer’s cow hide hits. The skirt: a denim cut-and-restitched number worn by the boys. A matching denim jacket was a cutting pattern fan’s dream. *That* silver-grey: as the smoke changed from bright blue to yellow, a super shiny silver-grey series of tunics as tops, one covered in pieces of plastic, these joined together like some kind of Rick Owens armour. Architecture: as the smoke changed colour again – this time to an intense dark green – out came a series of architectural shapes worn as tops. Underneath the stretched satin tops were struts which kept these shapes in place. These became increasingly complex and appeared to fall off and away from the models’ bodies; they looked astounding and like an architect’s doodles. The last section transcends what we see as fashion and questions everything that we come to expect from a fashion show and wardrobe. It’s designers like Owens, who stand intransigent to trends and “colours of the season” – this is merely rhetoric, anyway, and there to underpin retail. Instead this artist / designer battles for change and opens our eyes to a very new proposition. It was an outstanding show.
