Paris Men’s Fashion Week: The Casting at Rick Owens

This season, Rick Owens was thinking about myth of Sisyphus – the king who was punished in Hades by being forced to repeatedly to roll a huge stone up a hill only to have it roll down again as soon as he had got it to the top. However it wasn’t the fruitlessness of this labour that struck a chord with the designer, but the repetition of it. Because just like Sisyphus, history goes round in circles – something that is particularly evident in the current political climate.

“IT’S DRAINING TO WATCH UNHEALTHY CYCLES REPEAT THEMSELVES, BEHAVIOURALLY AND HISTORICALLY, AND EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, IT’S HARD TO SUPPRESS A HOWL OF RAGE,” he wrote in his A/W18 show notes (in his trademark capitals), doing little to conceal his feelings of frustration. “IF WE HAVEN’T LEARNED BETTER BY NOW, AFTER ALLLLL THIS TIME, DOES THIS MEAN UNHEALTHY CYCLES AND BASE URGES ARE AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE HUMAN CONDITION? AND IF THEY ARE INTEGRAL, DOES THAT MEAN THEY HAVE SOME KIND OF HORRIBLE VALUE?”

“I’ve been in kind of a pissed off mood for the last six months or so, I don’t know if it’s just me or whether it’s a more universal thing,” he said in an interview backstage. “I’m like, am I turning into some sort of misanthrope that’s only focusing on the world’s flaws? I don’t want to be that person, I want to be someone that exudes serenity! This show is kind of a safety valve release, I’m just trying to get it all out creatively.”

So how exactly did he get it out? With clothes that were slit and slashed; torn apart and then chained together. The sculptural quality of his garments remains, but there was something a bit ‘undone’ about them – not to mention that they were accompanied by a soundtrack of ‘terror techno’. It even fed through to the models, who are captured here by Marie Déhé.

Angus Munro of AM Casting, who has cast the designer’s shows for over a decade, said that this season the designer’s brief was simply “creepy”. “It’s something of a non-exact science,” he says on what characterises the Rick Owens man. “But generally I feel he needs to feel part of Rick’s world. There’s a personality and hard sensuality to a Rick Owens guys. It’s not just as simple as tough quirkiness.”

These models, many of whom possess a slightly otherworldly quality, wore their hair long or shaven; some had their faces (and heads) painted white, with fringe wigs fixed crudely to their scalps. As always, there was a real magnetism to it all – Owens’ shows are always a highlight of the Paris schedule, and this season was no exception.