Rick Owens has become red carpet gold
When Zendaya wore a futuristically draped ecru gown by Rick Owens to the London screening of Dune in October 2021, the designer’s stars re-aligned. Not that he needed confirmation – his audiences have long hailed Owens as Paris’ unsung couturier – but suddenly, the mainstream opened its eyes to the red-carpet potential of this “cult designer”, as he has been known. Then came Billie Eilish at the Grammys (deconstructed opera coat and dress) and Hunter Schafer at the Oscars (aged, twisted denim gown), and suddenly, it’s September 2022 and you’re watching a tulle dream in the red of ox blood waft down Owens’ brutalist runway.
The show was inspired by Theda Bara
Those who have observed Owens’ work through broad-minded glasses have always seen the kind of splendour you associate with great couture: an experimental, abnormal approach to dressmaking that pushes fashion forward. It’s the kind of beauty his unconventional child eyes saw in the silent movie books stored in his parents’ basement featuring Cecil B. Demile’s Cleopatra Theda Bara, “a creature dressed as an exotic ancient femme fatale,” as Owens wrote in his self-penned show notes. Following his men’s show in June, Bara inspired his second Egyptian-informed collection that began with Owens’ exploration of the country.
Owens has been going to Egypt
“I find great comfort in the remoteness and scale of [Egypt’s] history,” Owens said. “My personal concerns and global discomforts feel small in the face of that kind of timelessness. Lying down in the dirt with the Valley of Kings within view is a very soothing perspective. The temples started by one civilisation, seized and added onto by another, completed by another and then unearthed by yet another, are reassuring in their stoic permanence.” Owens’ dressmaking is often an outlet for his fears about the demise of the world, its wars and ecological decline. The couture-like creations that increasingly fill his runway have become his pyramids: mastodon creations made to last despite a structure of fabric and thread that should be fragile. You could say they’re his rock.
It was virtually haute couture
With Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Dazzle on the sound system and Cher in the audience – it wasn’t her first time at the Owens rodeo – surrounded by the clouds of white smoke that framed the runway erected around the fountain of Palais de Tokyo, with a great tower of water rising from the centre, the designer showed translucent leather gowns with sheer trains he likened to “a 700-year-old jellyfish”, using a creature often employed to describe the bouncy, ethereal nature of couture dresses. Staying on theme, he described his ripstop nylon dresses as “pearl, oyster and ivory”, but it was those epic tulle gowns – made from 200 metres of tulle made of waste materials that had been collected from oceans and landfills – that served as Owens’ most show-stopping moments.
Owens increased his sustainable efforts
Owens’ press material came with an impressive list of all the measures he’s taking to increase the sustainability of his brand. But, he said, “I am not listing our efforts in recycling out of virtuousness. We definitely have room to improve. But I love having the idea that efforts in responsibility and kindness can help in some small way to balance out forces of aggression and war. I don’t see my sojourns to Egypt as escapism but as a way to remind myself to look at the big picture – and to relievedly admire what survives after countless wars.”
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