Rick Owens: "The World Around Us Is Impossible to Ignore"

"When you call a fashion collection Tower, it's inevitable thoughts punt to the ivory sort, to designers luxuriously detached from reality, neo-Neros fiddling with their taffeta while Rome (or, in this case, Paris) burns. That isn't Rick Owens. He's an undeniable dark fantasist, sure, but he's also rooted in the (often equally-dark) realities of the now. "The world around us is impossible to ignore," he said, ahead of his Autumn/Winter 2026 collection. "The only way to go is parody.""

"Was there parody here? Maybe, though you weren't smiling as Owens' sinister figures lurched through a fog so pea-soup thick it rendered them stark grey outlines, menacing nightmare apparitions so distorted as to appear inhuman. Towering, indeed, was the word. Most were hiked up to boogie man proportions on viciously pointed platform boots in tough leathers and wool felt a clear quarter-inch thick, buckled straps batoning down these clothes tightly over the body."

Sinister figures emerged from a pea-soup fog as towering silhouettes, their proportions exaggerated by viciously pointed platform boots. Garments used tough leathers and quarter-inch wool felt, tightly strapped with buckles that read like armour. Several pieces were constructed from stab-proof Kevlar woven by an Owens supplier in Como. The collection left intent ambiguous between aggressor, protector, and victim, placing models and audience in literal and metaphorical darkness. A few models stumbled, underlining human vulnerability beneath the theatricality. Despite the intimidating aesthetic, many pieces remained tactile and gentle, grounded in a deep knowledge of fashion craft.

Read at AnOther