There were texts flying back and forth all over town. Is Rick really outside? It’s been a gloomy Paris Fashion Week, and it didn’t look like the rain would let up as showtime approached. In September, Rick Owens’s shows are usually held outside, staged on the monumental and highly cinematic terrace of the Palais de Tokyo. But then, by some stroke of luck, or maybe it was the tiny Ganesh figurine placed under the bench in Row B to ward off the clouds, the sun finally broke through. It was as if Cecil B. DeMille or Ken Russell, two of the movie directors Owens often quotes, were calling the shots from somewhere off-set.
The gothy elegance and high camp of Owens’s sui generis aesthetic was built on the sweeping epics of old Hollywood, as he reminded this reporter backstage when the rain was still pelting down. The crumbling grandeur of the setting, the evocative hair and makeup by Duffy and Daniel Sallstrom, the otherworldliness of his models, the extremity of his clothes—when everything comes together it can leave the audience in raptures.
This season, Owens changed the script. Instead of his usual cast of strange beauties, he invited students from Paris design schools to model. The motivation, he explained, was the unintended exclusivity of the show he held inside his Left Bank home last season. “My answer to that was, okay, we’ll invite everybody, and they can all be in the show,” he said. Students, unlike professional models who tend to the ever-more ectomorphic side of things, come in all shapes and sizes. “And the advantage, the plus side, of that is we get all of these body types to think about, and this is a great exercise for our company,” Owens said. “How do we make good stuff that fits all of these people? It’s so easy to do one size of everything.”
The student cast made for the most diverse runway of the week (Paris, like the other fashion capitals, is backsliding on this issue). It was also the most inclusive of Owens’s career, and in that spirit well-aligned with the origin story he tells about leaving small-town rural California to join the “weirdos and freaks” of Hollywood Boulevard.
Owens’s long narrow skirts with fishtail hems—their silhouettes lifted from old Hollywood movies of the ’30s—can sometimes be challenging, even for models who walk runways for a living. Throw in rain-slicked marble and some of the students struggled around the Palais de Tokyo’s vast spaces. It’s hard to witness that kind of discomfort, and it compromised the come-one, come-all message of the show somewhat.
But many other looks conveyed the freedom and the let-your-freak-flag-fly vibes Owens is so brilliant at producing. Looks that combined denim cutoffs that seemed dipped in tar, prodigious tulle stoles, and deflated inflatable boots by his frequent collaborator Straytukay. Or outfits that paired airy printed chiffon caftans and capes with miles-long trains with those same towering boots. Unraveling knit gowns made in collaboration with the Slovenian artisan Tanja Vidic blended ease and grandeur quite compellingly.
“I’ve always thought of my life’s mission as kind of balancing out oppressive discrimination and intolerance in the world by proposing a very cheerful perversity—that’s always been my thing,” Owens said. Rain or shine, he delivers on that promise.
Model names in chronological order:
Helene Bozic
Lilian Zancajo-Lugo
Alara Kocman
Antonia Helene Schulze
Maewenn Bian
Florence Fortune
Isabel Suart
Mikaela Brennan
Antonean Diaz
Miki Omori
Ilenia Toma
Diana Kuzina
Beatrice Casey
Kristina Nagel
Frida Beisswanger
Olivia Lee
Daphne Marleen Laan
Hakima Athuai
Julie Maes Bugeon
Martina Saponaro
Alessandra Lopez Y Royo
Coosje Froentjes
Lou Pierre-Michel
Valentina Galli
Alicia Pallenberg
Gabrielle Lafitte
Harper Slone
Elia Bnhm
Paola Macinagrossa
Ry Arne
Noee Feval
Nina Albaut
Shengwen Qiu
Anida Hasic
Angela Veke
Chiara Corbetta
Shannon Gendron
Elisa Leila Durand
Jenna Marvin
Nancy Uddin
Aubry Leonie
Tanya Saru
Jada Lynn
Angelina Holzinger
Marguerite Monat
Amelia Nguyen
Clara Cuve
Stephany Yujin Hong
Kai Kuan
Yeva Skrobot
Neha Saroop
Tianhui Poppy Zhang
Samia Larouiche
Paulin Vincent
Miia Kinnunen
Jade Bartoli
Coco Labbe
Amira Leviel
Cassia Viola Moinuddin
Zoe English
Niki Geux
Taisie Rumyantseva
Jennifer Liu
Maha Eljak
Lydia Harouna
Yunseo Jang
Jenaye Izimizi
Silya Haddad
Samyka Antoine Janvier
Julie Demont
Inssaf El Housni
Bethel Bogale Anulo
Celine Angui
Maeva Nounga-Peyraud
Sasha Kiavue
Audrey Biswese
Ilona Moreau
Davyna Nkounkou
Brookelynn Glandt
Wendy Kuo
Jade Da Moura
Ylva Falk
Zishu Wang
Nyamka Tegshjargal
Margaux Pike
Shiriu Li
Stephanie Shi
Kat Qiu
Emma Luna
Sofia Bella
Kennedy Mendeci
Sen Kim
Haoua Habre
Ruth Mbuyi Tshibangu
Mariam Dia
Luisa Oliveira
Allanah Star
Hannah Rose Dalton
Sophia Bihler
Lea Simsobat
Zineb Badiaga
Elyse Laparle
Elizabeth Cambage
Oksana Gosset
Alphonsine Jullien
Emilie Montfoort
Grace Wroblewski
Noor Fersadou
Constantine Semiramis
Fanny Edom
Thia Close
Anna Schlaifer
Francesca Bonesio
Olivia Orson
Bessie Lampecinado
A115
Lille Belkhayat
Baybjane
Amande Mahuteau
Witney Cindy Laplace
Dounia Kaddour
Mayara Ferreira
Cherine Hanique
Annie Farrayre
