Stone is the foundation of Rick Owens’ world. It’s in his craggy, geological silhouettes and his palette of chalk, dust and coal; in the hulking, brutalist forms of his showrooms or the concrete courtyard at his Palais de Tokyo shows. For SS27, Owens is going back to those foundations, excavating the material at the heart of his work for a collection simply titled Stone.
Returning to the Palais yesterday afternoon (October 1), the show tapped into the symbolic side of the word, which, for Owens, carries three contrasting meanings: the “elegant stoicism” of stone itself, the stone thrown aside during Christ’s resurrection, which he sees as a metaphor for release after sacrifice, and what he calls “all-too-common stone throwing, which I have made my life’s modest mission to oppose”.
As the opening looks made their way around the grated metal runway to an abrasive soundtrack by Sissymisfit, structured shapes dominated. Models wore rigid ivory column gowns made from industrial nylon webbing (normally used to secure shipping crates) woven into double-duchesse satin, while Owens described the garments in show notes as “slabs of rigid fabric crossed with girdered lines”. This industrial hardness continued through enormous geometric collars, exaggerated fishtail skirts and sharp bustles jutting from models’ bodies.
Elsewhere, that stone began to weather, as sheer dresses split open across the body and white fabric cocooned around torsos. Sulphur-dyed Japanese denim was bleached into mottled gradients across flowing trousers, microjackets and distressed tunics. Owens also revisited the tensegrity constructions from his recent menswear show, which were lattice-like constructions of latex tubes held up by a network of continuous tension. For this season’s women’s show, Owens swapped out the latex and leather for what he called “frothy tulle négligées” – though to us they looked closer to worms writhing beneath a lifted rock.
Down below, feet were strapped and bound into jewelled cage-like shoes – their skeletal frameworks resembling the structures left standing as buildings crumble around them – while up top there were reflective visor sunglasses, enormous feathered lashes placed deliberately off-centre and a handful of harsh Chelsea cuts, all in line with the stock Rick uniform.
