Welcome to Porterville (the dreadful hometown that created Rick Owens). Porterville is the one-word title for Owens’s latest collection, transfixed on the idea of Intolerance with a capital I. Owens opened his Paris sanctuary to showcase his newest collection and that idea of bigotry. A stark contrast to the place where he grew up, his home (although desolate and empty) is a place of warmth and acceptance. It is here that he, and his wife Michèle Lamy, choose to showcase the newest collection. What more to give than your very own home?
The show opens in typical fashion with Tyrone Dylan Susman, his muse. The vinyl-like inflatable boots are the standout, a bloat in the idea of conventional footwear, not unlike the infamous MSCHF reds. The idea of proportion has flown the coop. Boxy graphic knits and asymmetrical leathers layer the models. In the show notes, Owens labeled his silhouettes as “grotesque and inhuman.” Alienlike. Besides black, the colors are beautifully understated, muted yet vibrant in their execution. Owens’s idiosyncrasies are apparent. The palette, the drawstrings, the bald-headed model. Overall it’s an avant-garde expression into the rules of the world, and the Lord of DRKSHDW has once again, had enough of the binary.
At first glance I was reminded of the coveted Spring 2002 Raf Simons collection titled “Woe Unto Those Who Spit on the Fear Generation… The Wind Will Blow It Back” a critical response to the events of September 11th. But unlike Simons, who confronts his ideas head-on via imagery and graphics, Owens goes to the latter, the element of pure concept through construction. A visceral response. He isn’t showing his audience intolerance or displaying these problems in rigid formats, they have had enough air time. Instead, he is breaking this wall the only way he knows how. Allowing the clothes to become everything systems and society stand against, a kink in the hose. A true caricature of human behavior.
Owens gets a bad rap. Without his trying, he’s been jousted into this meta, fashionphile, hype beast culture. Collaborations with Converse, Doc Martens, and Champion not helping this narrative. When in reality, he’s a response artist. In an interview with GQ, he admits to being a runway watcher. He loves fashion. He just doesn’t connect with it. And where his capitalist collabs fall short, this collection is his most personal yet.
This absurdity and subversion of these garments laugh in the face of conformity. It topples those ideas. A mockery of societal hierarchy, of norms. The inflatable boot and fur duvet-esque parkas are a response to standards and proportion. This urge, this instinct to fit in has been quenched with the idea to stand out. The only way through is to fight. When speaking purely about fashion, you cannot fight intolerance in a slip-on flat (can you?). You need these round, obtuse-shaped “stompers” to pierce the veil of normalcy.
These ideas have always surrounded Owens. His ridicule of airport beauty, as he calls it, is because it’s about silence and conformity. And this collection is anything but that. This show is a poignant response to the illusion of alikeness. Owens believes that intolerance and greed are the roots of evil. But the Lord of Darkness isn’t all about darkness (surprisingly). Littered throughout this collection are fragments of hope, a search for something better. An urge to challenge intolerance. And like Simons, spit in the face of it.
Words and Graphic by Evan Skovronsky