An audience with Rick Owens could leave you feeling like a seal who s been thrown a bucket of red herrings. Before his show today, he was relating his new collection to brutalism, the architectural movement that gave the world a wealth of anonymously squat concrete skyscrapers. Backstage, the models in filleted ski masks were a glimmer of what he might possibly mean, even if Owens clarified that the masks were, for him, "a brutalist veil," and, to counteract the harsher implications of a Lecter-like face hugger, he d insisted on classically beautiful makeup: a pale face, a red lip. The soundtrack for the show, on the other hand, was Zebra Katz s savagely minimal "Ima Read." That at least had an unambiguously brutalist vibe. So did the set, with bars of fire blazing like a sacrificial pyre while the models walked.
And then, against all that, Owens had to go and unload the most lyrical, un-brutal collection he s ever shown, in an act of fierce self-contradiction that underscored his assertion that the story slowly "emerges" each season for him. In other words, even he isn t quite sure what it is he s just done.
There is certainly enough in Owens work to suggest that he is unwittingly channeling something deep and meaningful. He is, however, clued in enough to provide a clear context. He s a Hollywood baby, for instance, so if there were freaky glimmers of Fred Astaire in his men s show in January, here there were refractions of Marlene Dietrich in her Jean Louis-gowned cabaret appearances (and how unlikely is it that the very same reference popped up with Marios Schwab in London).
It was actually the pilled-chiffon dresses that were most suggestive of Dietrich s "naked" gowns to Owens himself, which was maybe an ellipse too far. If he s not sure about what he does, how can we be? Still, when Owens reeled off Dietrich s assets—"control, beauty, discipline"—they were all consummately expressed in his collection, never more so than in the serenely elegant gowns partnered with cropped lantern-sleeve leather jackets. Those same jackets also appeared with huge, capelike shearling collars.
Duly enchanted, it was easy to move on to Owens explorations of new graphic possibilities: blanket checks, patchworked furs, color-blocking (although the colors were a panoply of monotones).
Discussing the architectural influences on his latest collection, Owens mentioned that he d progressed from last season s Marcel Breuer ("soft" brutalism) to Frank Lloyd Wright, the most organic of architects. So it was Wright s elementalism that ultimately shaped Owens Fall. All those soft, round, flowing volumes were the very opposite of brutalism s angles. Thank God Rick Owens is a stranger to himself.
