“I was thinking a lot about police uniforms. And when you have a threat, you mock it. That is how you process it.”
Owens said that those thoughts crystallized during the development of the collection, as he looked at his suite of tactically slick shirting and super-cropped flight jackets and bikers and found himself stuck on a single question: epaulettes or no? “The subject felt sensitive,” he said. “And if it feels sensitive, that’s the direction to go in.”
Owens’s mother, Connie, was born in Puebla, Mexico. He himself was raised in Porterville, California—territory that remained part of independent Mexico until 1848, after the American invasion. Today, standing in the line-out and checking looks, Owens said: “I’m very wary of making proclamations. I’m a fashion designer. I’m in Paris. If you’re really protesting, you get on a plane and you get where you need to be, and then you do something. But you cannot be oblivious. Escapism is fine, but it’s not my thing. You have to at least be aware. I’m not saying I have answers. But it can’t be ignored.”
The silhouette this season was skinny— thin ice—but it gained bulk and bluster through those cropped cloaklets, jackets and tactical-armour hybrids. Some were leather, others Kevlar: a real fabric of control. Owens ultimately avoided epaulettes—too schticky—but left the grommeted webbing patches to which such insignia are normally affixed on the shoulders instead. “It’s exaggerated, ridiculous and practical all at the same time,” he said.
Blank-eyed models loomed out of sage-scented dry ice like moody wraiths moving through teargas. The line was disrupted by the season’s boots and the occasional padded shoulder brace, from which soared hulled, paper-boat extensions. Shirts in wool, felt, shearling, and canvas were cut with a semi-sinister utilitarianism. The throat snatches Owens chose as an epaulette substitute were more suggestively ambiguous. Were these men sheriffs or outlaws?
Lifelong commander-in-chief—if not in title —of the company he founded, Owens continues to sketch and design alone rather than delegate the work. “I’ve never had a design room. I’ve never had other designers,” he said. “Because whenever somebody comes to me with a portfolio, I always go: ‘You have your own thing. Just do it.’”
What he has increasingly embraced instead is throwing open the borders of his brand to others. “It’s become this fun thing: I can reach out to people, and we can do something together. And I can give them a credit.” Accordingly, Owens listed the social handles of this season’s collaborators in his press notes and identified the sources of manufacture for many of the mainline pieces. The fabric for his marbled, hypersized, stiffened and felted wool jackets, for instance, was handmade by an atelier in Rajasthan using Himalayan wool.
Collaboratively produced pieces included the color-washed, cropped gothic cashmere coats crafted by @straytukay. The hand-knit, cut-out check sweaters came from ecommerce model @sarutanya, whom Owens noticed knitting in her downtime and asked to see her work. The floor-length masks, each fashioned from over a mile of waxed cord, were made by @lucas___moretti.
“It’s fun engaging with people,” said Owens. “This is kind of my new system.” Owens’ power rests in awe enforcement.
