Rick Owens: Returning Valkyries

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Oct 1, 2020

The models looked like they were returning from a great war this season at Rick Owens – somewhere between the Siege of Troy and an episode of Stars Wars shot in Berghain at 5 a.m. in Berlin.

The Californian designer was officially listed in the Paris Fashion Week schedule, but instead he staged his highly impressive event live from the Lido in Venice.
 
Dry ice before the monumental Palazzo del Casino, a massive Rationalist structure, the cast posing at the end of each passage to be photographed before a tufa wall.

An industrial remix of Donna Summer's I Feel Love, as Owens' warriors and cool combatants all marched rapidly by, every one of them in a mask, and often visor. 
 
For next spring, when hostilities have died down, Rick wants his rascally regiment attired in sleeveless dusters, racy wrap cocktails of worn leather; V-shaped bustiers – all worn over spike-heeled platforms or thigh boots that meet the crotch.

His devilish bomber jackets and Space Race waistcoats now come with mega wide elastic bands and wildly protruding shoulders. Some so wide they looked like the models could probably take off.

Drone shots of the distant islands of the Venetian Republic; the famed coastline and the beach where they shot the iconic scenes of lost innocence in Death in Venice.
 
Owens’ whole production coming across like a scene from a marvelous feature film that just debuted in the local movie festival.
 
No doubt, Dirk Bogarde’s character Gustav Von Aschenbach would have loved this show. Pity he, and we, missed it. Owens again upstaging the whole industry with this sheer chutzpah.