Out. In. Out. BANG! Every eight or so seconds, one of Rick Owens’s models would walk past. Not invariably but mostly, their silhouettes were like bowties: out and wide at the shoulder and ankle and cinched inwards at the middle. As Owens observed from between his mega-brimmed baseball cap backstage, even portlier people could work the look—those pants sat high to create a center-point at the base of the sternum, north of the paunch.
And then came that bang: also every eight seconds or so, fireworks would detonate from one of six towering rigs set in the Palais de Tokyo pool and fill the space with swirls of purple and yellow smoke. The smell of cordite was in the air. Ash rained down. The scene seemed simultaneously apocalyptic and ecstatic, some gothic Pompeii, fiddling while Rome burns.
Owens played it straight from beneath that brim backstage. The IMF and World Bank were meeting in Paris today at a summit aiming to recalibrate the global response to climate change and natural disaster. Bain & Company last year predicted global luxury spend will grow by around 25% by 2025. Said Owens: “It’s human nature that’s dictating what’s happening. But I don’t understand exactly why: Is it a response to fear, relief at survival after Covid?” Personally, I think he was giving the hive too much credit: luxury is lovely, delicious, denial.
Louis Vuitton was not the only brand to Get Lucky climate-wise this season. Just as on Pont Neuf, the rain receded shortly before this outdoor show too. The collection was entitled Lido, after Owens’s home across the water from Venice from where he streamed several almost audience-free shows during the pandemic. He said: “This morning when it was raining I was almost hoping it kept raining during that show. That no one would turn up. Then we’d have that same vibe, that emptiness, which is what I loved about those shows. It was like ‘even under these circumstances, we’re going to forge ahead and run it even if nobody shows up. We’re still gonna do this. Because we’re unstoppable.” He said he and Michele had watched Diana Ross’s rain-lashed 1983 concert earlier this morning to prepare for just such an eventuality.
Owens’s simultaneously ancient and futuristic Italian-crafted riff on Victorian stricture, structure, and suture—those hard shoulders against the coiling soft folds of draped silk organza—contrasted with a more primitive habit: goth-phase Flintstones fare. There were high top versions of his leg-brace boots and “brutalist concrete sandals.” Ah, concrete shoes: Owens again tried to divine what’s pushing us to party. “Maybe it’s just to celebrate while we can. Is that what people are feeling?” Arguably, the designer was having his cake and eating it; yet this was mindful consumption, contradiction with a cause, fashion with a position. Bang! It was beautiful, for the damned.
