Bringing It on Dwelling With Rick Owens and Loewe

PARIS — When Rick Owens mentioned, ”It’s arduous to do exhibits in my home in Paris with out considering the place it began,” he wasn’t solely speaking about 25 years in the past, when he first landed in Paris. He was additionally fascinated about who he’d wished to be after he escaped his hometown Porterville, California, and moved to LA within the late ‘70s. “My whole aesthetic might be a response to an oppressive, illiberal upbringing,” he mused earlier than his presentation on Thursday. No matter utopian ultimate he aspired to in his misspent youth, he can go searching at “this tolerant, inclusive, eerie, elegant life” he has made for himself and suppose, “not dangerous. I made some form of headway.” And the motivation got here from Porterville, in order that’s what he known as his present. He lettered the title on hooded ponchos in a font that combined artwork deco Hollywood marquee and skater tradition. Tolerant, inclusive.

With an enormous retrospective upcoming on the Musée Galliera in Paris, Rick realised that a few of his early work has been misplaced, so he recreated it for “Porterville.” The primary items he ever made on Hollywood Boulevard had been lower from military blankets he purchased within the surplus retailer. Right here, they had been duplicated in hooded capes lower from Austrian loden felted with purified soften water from the Dachstein glacier. Elegant. Probably eerie too. Just like the fishtailed Hollywood goddess robes which were an Owens go-to since his early days. His fashions moved like imperious queens of outer area, their statuesque high quality amplified by the leather-based “cover” boots that expanded their decrease leg (a extra glamorous model of the inflatable rubbers that anchored his males’s present in January).

The “spacesuits” got here from these early days too, cashmere or felted alpaca bodystockings wrapped in hooded robes or ponchos, or an excellent serpentine tangle of high. The present closed with a handful of fashions ensnared in tubular webs of rubber hosing. Crimson carpets on Arrakis beckoned. Imagine it or not, Owens’s autobiography was woven into such items. His father wouldn’t let him watch TV however he learn him pulpy science fantasies by Edgar Rice Burroughs – area queens and area beasts and heroes in intergalactic loincloths – and performed him operas by Wagner and Puccini (“Madam Butterfly?” Rapturous music and dying!”). That was a part of the Porterville crucible that shaped Richard Saturnino Owens, and now, as the style world’s most profitable impartial designer, there isn’t a one who can cease him turning all of it into gold.

Displaying within the intimate human cocoon of dwelling was Owens’s response to the barbarism that has been unleashed on the earth. It’s additionally a consolidation of latest commitments. For the primary time, he’s taking French classes: each morning at 11, 5 days per week. He’s three weeks in and up to now he’s exulting in with the ability to say, “I hate umbrellas, a raincoat with a hood is enough,” in French. Owens has additionally realised that he has dedicated to his home in Paris. “Wow! That is the place I’m gonna get outdated. So I’m like, ‘I’ve gotta get these home windows finished.’” Porterville to Paris, womb to tomb.

Rick Owens and Jonathan Anderson are appropriate spirits, so it wasn’t a stretch that they need to each be fascinated about properties. One among Anderson’s subtexts together with his new assortment for Loewe (remembering that Anderson is probably the most subtextual of designers) was what results in the interiors of individuals’s homes, particularly the rich who permit decorators to decorate their properties for them. As soon as they may have been aristocrats, now they’re simply wealthy. The world post-“Saltburn,” in different phrases.

Particular company for Friday’s Loewe present arrived in limousines (Catherine O’Hara stepped out of a Rolls), a bit of efficiency artwork to go along with Anderson’s idea. The courtyard of the Chateau de Vincennes was laid out as a set of spacious rooms, painted a uniform patrician inexperienced. The partitions had been hung with small work by Albert York, a reclusive artist who was a favorite of Jackie Kennedy’s, within the black, folk-ish frames he favoured for his photos. (The little panorama featured on the invitation is in Anderson’s assortment.)

The garments elaborated on Anderson’s thought of a tremulous aristocracy. He began with a morning coat, a staple for schoolboys at Eton, the place they’re taught that world domination is their birthright, however Anderson reconfigured it for girls. He added elongated swallowtails and for the final look, he beaded the entire thing, even the pinstripes on the accompanying pants, in order that it regarded prefer it had been painted with caviar. You’ll be able to take it with no consideration now that there might be some transformative craft ingredient in all the things Anderson does. Right here, substantial coats had been collared in carved wooden which had been gilded to appear like steel. All of the prints had been beaded, together with the lettuce leaves and asparagus spears on purses. That they had a form of olde worlde preciousness about them. On the similar time, they had been as quintessentially surreal because the sneakers made from straps.

That disconnect is one among Anderson’s trump playing cards. In his personal assortment, he dropped bizarre granny wigs on his fashions’ heads. Acquainted, however completely twisted. Right here, the top gear was a shiny black toupé, with a success of loopy color within the bangs. Identical factor. His florals regarded like drawing room wallpaper however he lower them right into a halter-top that hung onto its skirt with a mean-looking leather-based belt. When he raised panniers excessive up on the torso, they had been like fledgling wings for flying away. However my favorite flourish was the chunk of crystal laid throughout one shoulder like an enormous see-through slug. Ours to not motive why with the Anderson problem.

The opposite trump card is his industrial savvy. Truth is, the logic-defying verve of Anderson’s garments generates warmth. The harem/fight pant combo goes to be in every single place.

Rick Owens

Loewe