The Rick stans are going to love this one. For his SS24 collection, Rick Owens went back to his old way: showing an all-black collection.
For the past few seasons, Rick has been experimenting with different materials and colours, with some pink sequined-inflated dresses. What sounds like a rogue move for the American designer actually made so much sense, naturally expanding his own design universe and challenging himself as a designer. But now, Rick is back to black.
Titled “Lido”, this collection was shown at Rick’s usual spot, the Palais de Tokyo under the rain, as if the weather knew to adjust itself to the incoming dark mood. As always, Tyrone Dylan opened the show, this season high-waisted black flared trousers and an exposed torso only covered with a knotted piece of fabric wrapped around his shoulders.
Flares became a core item this season, seen in leather, wool, silk, and cotton versions, naturally elongating the models’ bodies which have surely already had more than a few inches added to their heights with some hidden platform boots.
Tops this collection came in a variety of shapes, sizes and different fits, some looser, some tighter, though all defining or redefining the model’s own natural upper body. Draping was used to achieve a broken effect, especially on shoulders, with tops and wraparound, asymmetric fabrics. One top even came in the form of a leather bolero-glove hybrid, hanging off one of the model’s shoulders.
Rick is known to play with shoulders, and this season was no different. Some were bold, strong and exaggerated through heavy-padded jackets. One look specifically was a jacket made with skin-tight sleeves that fell further than the model’s hands, and a structural chest area that brought the shoulders out and down, as well as adding 3D elements to the chest, tamed down with rigid, symmetrical construction.
There were also hooded capes that loosened up the collection, and an updated version of FW23’s “Splint” boot in a sandeled version, here seen in flat and heeled iterations. In his show notes, Rick Owens proposed that joy is the only moral response to our threatened world, to which he can only respond with “a grim, determined elegance, all in a formal, restrained, albeit admittedly drama queen, black”.
We’re sure he isn’t done with his colourful experimentations, but for SS24, Rick went back to the core of what we know the brand to be. What just works with Rick Owens though, is that it really doesn’t matter what colours the designer uses. It’s his architectural approach to design that results in a structure that accentuates, masks and challenges its wearer’s own morphology. A collection in all dark tones is just a plus.
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