Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #001
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #002
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #003
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #004
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #005
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #006
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #007
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #008
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #009
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #010
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #011
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #012
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #013
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #014
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #015
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #016
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #017
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #018
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #019
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #020
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #021
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #022
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #023
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #024
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #025
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #026
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #027
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #028
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #029
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #030
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #031
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #032
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #033
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #034
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #035
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #036
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #037
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #038
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #039
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #040
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #041
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #042
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #043
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #044
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #045
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #046
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #047
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #048
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #049
Model on the runway at the Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Spring Summer 2027 Ready To Wear Fashion Week, Runway Look #050
Dear Shaded Viewers,
Somehow the weather always turns perfect for Rick. Thursday at the Palais de Tokyo was the most beautiful day, all golden light on pale stone. Against that, he gave us something quieter than usual: a slow, stoic procession down the steel-grate runway that showed how much power there is in restraint.
He gives “Stone” three meanings. One is elegant stoicism. Another is the stone rolled away at the Resurrection, a release that comes once a duty has been fulfilled. The third is the everyday stone-throwing he has made it his life’s mission to oppose. All three were on that runway.
The stoics. It opened with slabs of ivory and putty. Rick found a heavy industrial nylon strap, the kind used to haul shipping crates, and had his Como mill weave it into a rigid double-duchesse. The result is a long-sleeved column gown that stands away from the body like architecture. Next to it were gowns in pure silk duchesse woven so densely, about 100 double-twisted yarns per centimetre, that the mill can only make 30 metres a day. You feel that patience in the way the fabric falls. The halter dresses rise into winged collars that frame the face like a calyx. The pintucked sleeveless dresses billow out into enormous skirts. And the sheer pleated chiffon, worn with feathered eye masks, looked like a ghost bride.
The release. Then the stone rolled away and things got loose. Tulle and silk capes floated behind the models like spirits, and pentagram-pierced jersey gowns had their trains flying. The black looks were magnificent. There were sheer organza columns with funnel collars, and a cascade of shredded black tulle stacked in tiers like crow feathers. One dress was a lattice of knotted tulle ribbons, a cage you’d want to live in. Another looked carved from pleated black satin and spiralled up into a collar that swallowed the chin.
The constructions. The pieces I keep thinking about are what I can only call pipe-cleaner sculptures: frothy tubes of ruffled tulle in buttercup yellow and bone, strung on taut cords around the body. They come from tensegrity, Buckminster Fuller’s word for a structure where the solid parts are held in place by continuous tension. It’s the way our own bones are held by connective tissue. Rick did these in latex and leather for a past men’s show. Here they come back as négligées, crossing the body like a star, trailing to the floor and wrapped over kraft-coloured cowboy boots. They’re absurd and tender and brilliant at the same time.
Then came the millefoglie jacket, a swirling mass of thousands of tulle circles cut one by one from almost 200 metres of recycled nylon. Each circle is sewn onto a tulle base, and the whole thing is sculpted onto the body by hand. Each jacket takes about 45 hours. It looks like a geological formation, layer on layer of sediment turned into couture.
Rick keeps us grounded with sulfur-dyed Japanese denim from Kojima and bleach-dégradé washes from the Veneto. The cropped jacket with its giant folded collar and frayed sash is perfect with a slit maxi skirt. The crystal-caged gladiator boots will be everywhere.
The congregation. You can’t write about a Rick Owens show without writing about who comes to it. The crowd arrives dressed head to toe in his clothes, from every season and every era. They aren’t fans so much as a congregation, and Rick is their OG leader. They’ve followed him for decades because he has never stopped offering what the pentagrams in this collection stand for: a place for the outsiders, the “other,” the people the world likes to throw stones at. Their devotion is the clearest proof that his clothes mean something beyond fashion.
Elegant, stoic and wide open.
Later,
Diane
Diane Pernet
A LEGENDARY FIGURE IN FASHION and a pioneer of blogging, Diane is a respected journalist, critic, curator and talent-hunter based in Paris. During her prolific career, she designed her own successful brand in New York, costume designer, photographer, and filmmaker.
