Rick Owens let it burn. Nihilism. His less-than-idyllic California youth. He threw it all metaphorically on the pyre he erected in the courtyard of the Palais de Tokyo for his spring show and lit the match. Across the Atlantic, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was wrapping her testimony that might prevent a man who stands several times accused of sexual misconduct from coasting into a lifetime appointment on the highest court in the U.S. The culture is going up in flames.
Owens’ structure was a crude model of Tatlin’s Tower, the Russian Constructivist monument to communism and modernity that was never built. “I wanted to burn down a utopian monument,” he said before the show, going on to describe the women he conjured in the collection as witches. “California witches because they’re in hiking boots and cut-off jeans. Where I grew up, that’s what we all wore….So I brought my utopian California youth to Paris and I’m setting it on fire.”
It was a powerful, prescient concept. Around the burning tower walked a parade of witchy women decked in jackets, hoodies, bra tops and short destroyed denim. The silhouettes were short, all jutting angles, topped off with angular wire headpieces and bug-eyed sunglasses
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