Rick Owens doesn’t wear underwear.
It is, he said, the Californian in him. Doesn’t matter that Mr. Owens, 63, has lived in Paris for much of his adult life. That coastal breeze is hard to shake.
“I just wear socks and shorts,” said the designer in his still-intact Cali Drawl after his men’s runway show here on Thursday.
Why did Mr. Owens exactly his non-member dishes? To make a point about this dazzling collection, one that saw him push back. (That’s strip back, not strip, people. Backstage, he was modestly clad in a sharp-shouldered topcoat and stretchy leather pants that wrinkled around his boots like a Shar-Pei’s mug.)
“This was a basic show,” Mr. Owens said. It opened with a series of long johns and unfolded into Melton Coats and Spartan White Hoodies. Basics, right?
Well, for someone who has never experienced the intergalactic gothic wizardry of Mr. Owen has seen, these would be quite unorthodox basic principles. Yes, the zip-front meltdown jackets were understated (this is executive wear, Owens style), but leather jackets came down to the belly button and those long Johns were paired with a PECS high-rise crop top, which showed off Mr. revealed Owens’ Muse, the model Tyrone Dylan Susman.
“A beautiful body is even more exciting than expensive clothes,” said Mr. Owens, a special gym scent. (In another life, Mr. Owens could have given Billy Blans, the Tae Bo man, a run for his money. “If I could get washboard belly, anyone could,” said Mr. Owens. “I swear! Because I am! Just a lazy pig.” This critic, who has been surviving on Pomme Frites and Croissants for the past week, started feeling mighty inadequate.)
Other ingenious Owens flourishes would only have been on the planet ZOD, like a white hoodie that has the texture of fossilized duct tape and boots with wavy strands all around them, reminding me of car wash brushes.
“I want sophistication and simplicity, but I also want moments of madness,” Mr. Owens said. Do you want angry? Peep his earlobe-kissing jacket collars, which he called “Dracucollared” in his show notes. (Mr. Owens, on top of everything else, writes some beautifully Seussian news releases.)
“I always love that heavy Dracula glamour,” he said. The upright collars gave the models the image of Bela Lugosi attending a kissing concert. But the designer assured me that when they are folded, “they look kind of normal.”
Normal, however, is not what Owens’ consumer craze is all about. The disciples who fill his shows, bringing out their most beloved Owens inventions, are proof of this.
In the front row of this one sat British singer FKA Twigs, in a languid leather jacket and thigh-high brown boots, and star Owens shopper Dave Chappelle, in a sleeveless puffer and black leather flames. (There’s something curious about that, as Mr. Chappelle has become increasingly polarizing, he’s started dressing like the frontman of a German nu-metal group.)
But the real flashes of brilliance are found in the standing section. There you can see the die-harders with mutant puffers bunched around their shoulders, like air conditioning ducts, ethereal mohair sweaters and tractor boots with soles the size of GMO stick bins. I’ve been submitted to a fleet of 20-year-old men in broccoli-top haircuts with matching black Owens jackets and versions of his muscle sneakers. They bounced around and waited for the show to start.
It’s happy converts like these, already familiar with the otherworldly extremes of Rick Owens’ output, for whom the so-called basic principles he presented will really be just that.
