Question Time in Paris

What do I want to say with my clothes? What do I want to say when I do shows? How do I do it gracefully?

The questions Rick Owens asked himself after his show on Thursday night have been resonating throughout fashion since the pandemic at least. They can be distilled into one deadly word: relevance. And now here’s another war to underscore the challenges even more brutally. Rick felt he’d said everything he needed to say about oppression and fascism in his men’s show in January. This new presentation was more about “behaviour during wartime.” He had in mind one of his lodestars, the mesmerising Marlene Dietrich, who went from Weimar sex symbol to anti-Nazi activist to iconic cabaret star. Her arc traced his in a way: sexual outlaw to concerned citizen to avatar of experience, resignation and late-stage glamour. “I think I’m in my cabaret years,” Owens agreed laconically. “I’m not sure how to do it exactly right, but that’s kind of the idea of behaviour during wartime.” Rising to the occasion, in other words. Or, as he very succinctly put it, “Threat defines character.” He’s always been an incisive thinker, but that was hands down an incisive thought for the ages.

The collection was similarly sharp. Owens called it “Tower.” The opening looks — elongated floorlength sheaths of leather, wool and protective Kevlar — made living towers of his models. Their sequinned boots pushed them higher still. Owens was thinking about the energy he missed from punk and glam rock and clothes that rejected the status quo by creating gorgeous grotesques. Again, so close to his own modus operandi. There was so much weird beauty in the velvet twisted and draped over leather shorts, in a column of lilac fringing, in the massive coats of goat fur echoing the swansdown Dietrich wore in her twilight years. And in the carapaces of felt that rose to frame heads which had been embellished by a mutant hair, makeup and eyelash collaboration with Berlin-based artist Figa.link.

Interstellar winds echoed across Ryoji Ikeda’s soundtrack, its music of the spheres a hauntingly beautiful reminder of the Great Beyond that Owens wonders about. Ikeda often uses frequencies at the edge of the range of human hearing. That felt appropriate for a designer who often presents proposals for clothing that are the edge of the range of human comprehension. In this particular moment, with the planet locked into what seems like an inescapable doom spiral, incomprehension feels like a basic stress response. Except that, however mordant Owens likes to sound, he is a fundamentally optimistic and straight-ahead guy. Did I really hear him say “shorts and a tank top”? Well, there they were on the catwalk. And his show, with all of the sheer human effort put into the clothes and hair and makeup and music and world-building, was ultimately a fuck you to cynicism, despair, doing nothing. He claimed its indefinable essence was earnestness. I thought charm worked too.

The main question Daniel Roseberry has been asking himself is how to satisfy a Schiaparelli customer who has made it clear she doesn’t want anything daily-dull from him. Ladle on the glamour. At the same time, Roseberry insisted his ready-to-wear is more and more rooted in reality. Did he mean its easiness: the deconstructed bustier, the stretch fabric, the dandy man-tailoring? Otherwise, his reality seemed more subsumed by the surreality of a collection which wallowed in sumptuously campy exhibitionism. That made sense given the huge Schiaparelli show that opens at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum in three weeks. Trompe l’oeil nudes were printed on knit, libertine dandies sported rigorous man-tailoring, an Aran sweater dress was spectacularly sliced. The kitten heels featured angry cats. The faces on the high heels were Schiaparelli’s own mannequins Pascal and Pascaline. And Roseberry’s celebration of the breast was special.

Roseberry presented his clothes in the Carrousel de Louvre, three decades ago the subterranean venue for most shows during Paris Fashion Week. The room was as dark as the collection, footlights casting a dramatic light. He claimed the setup reminded him of Alber Elbaz’s shows. “He had teams of people just doing one seam around the body, so we started doing that here.” A kind of reduction to essence. It was, for Roseberry, also an era of glamour that wasn’t referencing haute couture. He pointed out how many dresses in his own collection were actually separates: skirt, top, belt.

Between Teyana Taylor, Demi Moore and Bad Bunny’s star turn at the Super Bowl, Roseberry has had a stellar year so far. The connection between music and fashion has been specially inspiring for him. He marked it with looks that laser-cut CDs into paillettes, or spun faux furs from cassette tapes. His soundtrack was made up of songs he considered earworms, everything from Laurie Anderson’s “Oh Superman” to Janet Jackson’s “Escapade.” Things you can’t unhear. The accompanying clothes he imagined as eyeworms. Things you can’t unsee. That should keep his customers satisfied.

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