Super-sized Rick! There was room for all of us at Rick Owens' A/W 16 show. Not just on the benches, but in the clothes themselves. You could’ve fitted a fair few of us into one of the parkas, dresses (no one puts men in tunics quite like Owens) or potentially just one of those ginat pockets. Volume was what one was intended to notice and ponder - it suggested anger and urgency. Yet, at the same time it seemed to be protecting and swaddling the models. One could interpret both aggression and vulnerability. Either way, Owens clearly wanted us to take note - why else would you make the clothes so big that the front row were forced to look up from their iPhones and Instagrams and try and spot the boy beneath the cloth? Sometimes he who shouts the loudest wins - and, via scale, Owens was shouting. Some say big is better, but in this case it was bolder.
But, when you describe it like that, it sounds like a comedy; like one of Owen’s pithy or witty details - a fetish twist, a visible penis etc. But no - there was a sombreness to this show, a sense of reflection. It was titled Mastodon, a reference to a group of America-dwelling elephant-like mammals that became extinct over 10,000 years ago. Elephants - that explains the scale! One got the sense that Owens was preparing his boy, with those mammals in mind, for the end of the world or some great disaster. Maybe the troubles had already started - jackets with bleach marks looked like they’d been harmed or stained by acid rain, liquid oozing from a wound or even a projection of bodily fluid from some attacking creature.
Owens’ collections often look like the uniform for some strange otherworldly army. That fits with his shopper - they’re often called a ‘tribe’. They love Rick Owens because it’s distinctive. By wearing it, they associate with something unique and irreverent. But rather than sending his boys en masse into battle, this season it looked like Owens was considering them individually, furnishing each one with the tools to survive alone. Less Braveheart, more Hunger Games, to put it simply. The last look resembled a giant padded sleeping bag hung around the body. I thought of the bedroom and the sexual, sensual, fetishistic collections Owens has done in the past. But this was comforting rather than seductive. A garment to live in - like a tent. It protected the wearer, rather than attracting a viewer (despite the eye-grabbing size). On viewing it, one wondered if we should fight the fight or just accept doom and head off to bed.
