Rick Owens’s Hyper-Elegant A/W´23 Show

Rick Owens’s AW23 offering was guided by thoughts of Ukraine; Anders Christian Madsen breaks down the biggest takeaways from the elevated collection.

It was about elegance

Leave it to Rick Owens to sum up the newfound elegance we’ve been seeing across the fashion landscape this season. “I think it’s a response to this story of aggression that we’re all witnessing,” he said after his show, referring to the war in Ukraine, which went into its thirteenth month last week. “It makes me feel less frivolous and less carefree. And I think there’s a gravity to it. In a situation that demands gravity, you dress a little bit more formally.” Elevated in every way, Owens’s collection cemented that sensibility in an elegant proposal that formalised the codes of his own brand genetics.

It reflected on the war in Ukraine

Last month, Owens said he had struggled to find the right tone for the statement he wanted to make. “I was telling everybody I don’t feel comfortable doing a runway show during a war without acknowledging it,” he said at the time. “We were all thinking, what do we do? What is tactful? What is virtue signalling? What is in bad taste? It turned into kind of a debate, and we didn’t come up with anything. So, I decided I’d better not do anything. I thought the show would speak for itself. It’s a sombre show.” His women’s presentation was a more ceremonious expression of that sentiment.

It was all about platforms and trains

In Palais de Tokyo, Owens re-erected the podium-style scaffolding runway of his men’s show, raising his models – already elevated on sky-high platform boots – so they towered over guests like hyper-elegant giants, the long trains on their skirts pouring over the edges of the runway as they dragged behind them. “It was a new way of deifying these creatures,” Owens said. He purified his constructions – some left to their abstract, sculptural Owens-core while others took more conventional forms like knitted evening dresses – evoking a certain sobriety. It felt like an observant collection. A sign of respect.

Owens elevated everything

“In light of the new war that’s a very threatening element in all of our worlds, we’re seeing people behaving with such dignity in the face of adversity. I was thinking, what can I do that’s respectful of that? I thought, I need to be more formal. It needs to be more elevated – that’s a good word – and deliberate, and maybe even earnest. It can’t be ironic or nonchalant or careless. It needs to be deliberate. And it needs to be more groomed. More Avedon-worthy. That kind of thing,” Owens said.

It was covered in sequins

As a glimmer of hope – or perhaps a more ambiguous symbol of decadence – Owens embellished his purified constructions in sequins rendered in faded colours. “We’ve been doing sequins for a while now. I thought, I can’t do more sequins. Or: maybe I overdo it! And do a whole sequin-spectacular climax,” he explained. Owens scored his orchestration with a spirited new song by Peaches, marking the electroclash singer’s 20th anniversary tour. “Her scrappy resistance and ferocity is an example more relevant than ever,” he wrote in his show notes.