From Rick Owens: “Following our men’s show, we are once again showing in my home and working compound where we began selling our collections 25 years ago – an intimate move in observance of the barbaric times through in which we are living.
The show is called ‘Porterville’ recalling my experience growing up in a judgemental environment hostile to an overly sensitive young sissy. This kind of banal hostility and intolerance is a fact of life that we are witnessing at its most horrifically magnified intensity right now.
In past interviews I have mentioned my stern father not allowing a tv in the house but I underplayed the significance of what he replaced it with – opera. Stories of aching, longing, and disappointment, set to rapturous music reaching for transcendence by Puccini, Wagner, Purcell, Strauss… And every evening he would softly read Edgar Rice Burroughs paperbacks to me, stories set in space with names like Thuvia, Maid of Mars and Ilana of Gathol and a princess of Mars, filled with beings that were weird but noble, and he would alter his voice for each character. On each book cover would be a Frank Frazetta illustration of muscular heroes and heroines in the briefest of vaguely jugendstil-esque space gear surmounting jewelry adorned monsters. This was the world I longed to leave Porterville for.
Weird but noble spacesuits are knit in recycled cashmere or felted alpaca and swaddled in matching hooded robes or turbo ply-knit ponchos. Knit tops knot and bundle around the upper torso while leather duvet stretch pull-on boots anchor the lower leg echoing our inflated rubber collab with Straytukay for our last men’s show.
Some jackets, shrouds and siren skirts are made out of recycled discarded bicycle tires by Matisse Di Maggio, a member of the Parisian BDSM community who specializes in rubber. Capes and mantles are cut from heavy and compact loden felt made by a fifth generation family owned mill founded in 1888 at the foot of the Massif Du Dachstein in the Austrian alps. Woven with coarse austrian wool and felted using purified glacier melt water from the Dachstein glacier.
Shaggy coats and donut stoles are made from heavyweight felt made with the longest alpaca fibres on a silk warp, which is washed, felted and then brushed out.
13oz japanese denim is treated with layers of wax and foil that are pressed, washed, and tumbled to create the final cracked and peeled megacrust look. All our denims are treated in an Italian wash-house in Veneto that produces in smaller treatment baths to reduce water waste and utilize a water purifying process that enables them to recycle a portion of the water used. All of our denim washes are ZDHC certified.
Tunics and cargoboots are made in a 1.5mm thick veg tanned and washed calf leather finished using only natural waxes. Veg tanning means only vegetal and natural tannins are used in the process of tanning and preserving the leather.
Cropped duvet pod jkts are either made in marlene dietrich charmeuse, or heavyweight merino shearlings tanned in tuscany by a second-generation family owned and lwg certified tannery. The LWG certification ensures traceability of raw materials, high environmental standards, and efficient use of energy and water consumption in the tanning process.
Brutalist shapes from our furniture collection are applied to sleek clutches in a futuristic palladium finish, matching orb necklaces and cuffs adorned with faceted hematite crystals made outside of Florence in Tuscany, Italy and the stones are cut outside of Venice.
I also asked photographer Kristina Nagel, Hannah from Fecal Matter, and Gena Marvin to walk our runway.
Kristina has been lending me her face in a series of self-portraits wearing my collection that captures the weird elegance I am continuously aiming for.
Hannah and Steven from Fecal Matter have long been committed to balancing out forces of condemning judgement with their cheerful and exquisite depravity – something I try and do in my own small way.
Gena’s often dangerous commitment to her aesthetic in her native Russia is recorded in a beautiful documentary by film maker Agniia Galdanova.
And the music is a synthesized version of ‘Pavane for a Dead Princess’ by Ravel that my father often used to play in our house and sounded like an eerie elegant and benevolent world far away from Porterville.”
Casting: AMC casting (CLM)
Hair: Duffy (Streeters)
Makeup: Daniel Sallstrom (MA World Group)
Production: La Mode en Images
Music: ‘Pavane for a Dead Princess’ by Maurice Ravel
www.rickowens.eu
@rickowensonline
Highlights from the Collection
