The show starts at the door with Rick Owens in Paris Fashion Week. A fashion-forward army of terrestrial provocateurs emerge from the darkest corners of the guest lists. All are equipped with chunky foot-tall glass block platforms and alien-esque eye contacts as they gather to be revived by the apocalyptic and dystopian environment that Owens is now known for creating.
The unveiling of ‘Concordians’ happened in no place other than his usual scene at Palais de Tokyo. Though there is never anything “usual” about a Rick Owens collection is there? Named after and inspired by the small industrial town of Concordia, Italy where Owens and his team have travelled to for the past 22 years to visit the factory producing their work, Owens describes the town as “A kind of studious isolation. Almost bleakness”. Yet it is a place filled with personal meaning which seems like a great starting point to inspire the collection.
Models emerged from behind the white screen into the foggy, industrial room where guests are seated to Iggy Pops ‘Mass Production’ , a song that Owens used for his first NY show 23 years ago. His vision is clear and brings a new level of opulent detailing and theatrical intensity that we have not yet seen from the designer. With Dracucollared sculpted jackets, high slit denim maxi skirts, and textured leather chaps made in collaboration with Leo Prothmann, Owens brings the alien aesthetic into a wild west American utopia. The iconic leather fringes that caught everyone's attention in the previous mens FW25 collection have now been reimagined into chain-linked, laser-cut, leather maxi dresses and zip-jackets creating a somewhat animated static effect. He has also brought in wearable feminine allure with cropped leather and glittering coats draped over figure-hugging high-neck sleek maxi dresses.
Inspired by his recent collaboration with RIMOWA suitcases, leather flight jackets also lined with leather were designed to give what Owens describes as a “deliciously fetishistic quality, but also a discreet opulence”. Referencing 1930s interior designer, Jean-Michel Frank, who serves as a personal source of inspiration for him.
Though ‘Concordians’ didn’t stray far from the avant-garde and ominous nature the designer has made signature in all of his displays, what is particularly unique in Concordians as a collection is the clear refinement of his true vision and the collaborative approach he took to create a cohesive, wearable, meticulously detailed, and crafted collection rooted in a nostalgic and retrospective look into how far the LA born designer has come in his career, further solidifying him as a fashion architect of gothic romanticism.
