By his personal estimation, Rick Owens mentioned his spring 2025 males’s present again in June — akin to watching a biblical epic by Cecil B. DeMille — ranks as a private finest, and it was certainly deeply shifting and uplifting as a show of unity, range, dignity and defiance.
His girls’s present on Thursday evening reprised his broad casting of actual individuals of all sizes and shapes, culled from trend faculties and his personal firm. Facial tattoos and piercings gave the impression to be most popular.
The spectacle felt extra solemn and downbeat, a temper fed by Wagner’s dramatic, throbbing “Liebestod,” the blackout contact lenses and the dark-hearted fashions, most of them black and with Owens’ acquainted ramrod or smokestack shoulders, fishtail skirts and Frankenstein-esque boots.
His 120 fashions strolled out in clumps, little trend tribes united by their hooded capes, biker leathers, cosy bomber jackets or purposely laddered knitwear.
Owens titled the gathering “Hollywood,” and these girls regarded much less like Hollywood extras and extra like characters absolutely answerable for their very own narratives, styled in appears to be like that straddled “simply the best stability of class and camp that I’m at all times going for,” the designer mentioned. Loads of the lengthy attire might play a job on high Tinseltown crimson carpets.
Friends had been handed black ponchos upon arrival on the out of doors venue within the parvis of the Palais de Tokyo. Certainly, the plastic-covered benches had been sodden, because it had rained virtually the entire rattling day.
Then miraculously, the clouds parted and unleashed that magical slanting golden-hour gentle, and blue sky to silhouette the shrouded characters on the roof edge tossing white flower petals to mingle with the white fog.
Backstage, Owens confessed that he lengthy resisted utilizing classical music for his trend exhibits, discovering it too “emotionally manipulative,” till that June males’s present, when Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 7” swelled from the audio system.
He makes no apologies for it now amid the battle in Ukraine and rising conflicts elsewhere on the globe.
“I felt prefer to fight barbarism, I needed to introduce as a lot dignity and civilization as I might.…We should always simply go as rapturous as we will,” he mentioned.
His different antidote is different magnificence, or as he calls it, “cheerful depravity, as a result of the world might be such a judgmental, smug, conservative and condemning place.”
Certainly, Owens held out hope that his inclusive casting, and broad trend providing, may welcome extra individuals into his different trend universe. Boyish shorts, bra tops and zipper-streaked macs, jersey tops and little jedi robes had been among the many choices.
Is trend’s darkish lord attempting to make his garments extra approachable?
“I’ve at all times thought it was approachable, and it is usually because I wouldn’t have survived this lengthy if it wasn’t,” he replied. “Anyone can go into the shop they usually can discover one thing. Not all the things is shoulder pads and wings.”