On Vogue.com-- http://www.vogue.com/collections/fall-2012-rtw/rick-owens/review/
by Mark Holgate
For such a graceful, refined performance that considerably advanced the idea that fashion should be of a power and strength that doesn’t ever resort to cliché, there was an incendiary quality to Rick Owens’s show. It wasn’t just the flaming backdrop that ignited seconds before it started. Or the way models’ heads were encased in balaclava-like hats that had been slashed to reveal their darkened eyes and deeply glamorous scarlet lips. A lot of that throbbing, insistent discomfort came, instead, from the sound track, which solely consisted of Zebra Katz’s “Ima Read,” a rap with a hard, brutal invective that makes copious use of the phrase “Ima read that bitch,” and didn’t exactly sound like it came from a very happy place.
Such was the reaction from the audience filing out afterwards, and so counter did the lyrics run to the way that Owens cherishes women that an e-mail was duly sent to Owens to find out why he chose “Ima Read.” He wrote back: “‘I’m gonna read that bitch’ is a gay vogueing-culture term for ‘tell her what’s what.’ It’s ridiculously exaggerated in this song and expressed mostly through the female voice. I liked how it expressed savage impulses in a chilly, controlled way. And I was speaking to the savage impulses we all recognize in ourselves and suppress in elaborate and formal ways.”
Rare is the designer these days who makes us connect in some visceral way with his or her show, who pushes us to a place that isn’t necessarily welcome or comfortable. (Maybe it’s because there are so many shows that it is possible to get inured to what’s going on; after all, the preponderance of the X-rated Azealia Banks track “212” this season, a paean to oral sex, has barely raised eyebrows.) Owens, an intelligent and thoughtful designer, isn’t one to flinch from going on that journey, even if it leaves him exposed to anger, criticism, or misinterpretation. He might even prefer it that way. After all, he acknowledges that his headpieces “might be read violently as well. It was my brutalist version of Marlene Dietrich’s veil in Shanghai Express. I can realistically see them with the veiling pulled up on any girl in the Métro.”
What is far less open to interpretation is that Owens is someone who doesn’t like to reside in a comfortable place; he is always looking for the provocation in his particular brand of elegance. For fall, he opened with somber, floor-length coats and flowing dresses or draped tunics and long skirts in tufted and textured mushroom and gray wools, the looked dramatically illuminated against the flames, that rap track blasting out. The whole effect was like Joan of Arc at an underground club—very “Rouen is burning.” Gradually, that gave way to exquisitely cut soft/severe leather coats that morphed into cropped sculpted leather or shearling jackets, rounded volume blown through the sleeves and worn with skirts cut with circular, spiraling seams that fell to the ankles. Then came a series of gorgeous collarless raglan-sleeved jackets and slim coats graphically blocked in mink and leather. Presented in this context, Owens’s message was clear: Appreciate the luxury and the beauty, but don’t let it get disconnected from the world around us—and it stayed burning long after those flames had gone out.
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