Review of Rick Owens Fall 2023 Fashion Show
Season of the Witch
By Mark Wittmer
Alive with brilliant moments of craft and construction that bring sparkling life to an atmosphere of severity and gloom, Rick Owens’ Fall 2023 women’s collection sees the designer continue to reflect on his legacy and his position at the forefront of design thought.
Owens weaves a subtle thread of Victorian psychosexual dynamics throughout a sober consideration of some of his favorite techniques, both old and new.
As with all of Rick’s collections, the men’s collection and the women’s collection are considered together, with the latter developing on the former. This show picks up where its companion left off, continuing its sense of austerity and dark mysticism while expanding its nascent ideas into new directions, and especially pushing its use of padded, buoyant, knotted structures to wrap the body.
These pillowy wrappings are a star feature of the collection, and one of its prime vehicles for conveying its exploration of restrictiveness and liberation of the body’s form. In some instances, a padded structure wraps horizontally around the torso, pinning the arms to the side like a straight jacket. In others they majestically wrap the shoulders like budding wings or a royal robe. In a collection that feels especially deep into Rick’s penchant for the gothic, dark, and hard-edged, the feeling of softness and protection that these pieces seem to suggest feels particularly disruptive and impactful – especially when rendered in iridescent pink – and is demonstrative of the designer’s alien ability to evade expectations and make us rethink what we thought of as familiar.
Juxtaposed with these cocooning and bulbous expansions of the silhouette are the asymmetrical dresses which slash across the body, revealing the muscle of a thigh or arm, and the architectural and angular shoulder extensions that return from the past few seasons and are obliquely inspired by the enduring monuments of Ancient Egypt.
Beautifully at play is Owens’ ability to use something familiar, especially when it comes to material, in a completely new way. Typical fabrics and treatments like silk, thrashed denim, sequins, leather, and ribbed knits take on new life as they are alchemically warped into uncanny structures and made to harmonize darkly with one another. The same goes for garment categories: Rick’s bomber jackets are here, as well as a range of coats and capes made just weird enough through asymmetrical construction and reconfigured proportions, but even more banal pieces like puffer jackets and peplum blouses get elegantly incorporated into the heady brew. Puffy sleeve adornments recall pool floaties or Victorian dresses.
Every look is paired with the designer’s iconic Kiss boots – a familiar feature that could field accusations of getting repetitive were they not reconceived in puffer, over-the-knee, and cast-like bondagey editions.
A look to the Victorian era can be felt in the collection’s silhouettes and in its interest in the occult, but also in a deeper sense in its playing with spectra of restraint and liberation, concealed and revealed, safe and dangerous, unknown and known. The Victorian age is notorious for its paradoxical obsession with stiff morals and restraint on the one hand and an undercurrent of psychosexual obsession on the other.
Using astounding craft and imagination to blur the lines between what is familiar and unfamiliar, human and otherworldly, Rick Owens shines a light on our darkest and most intimate desires.
