More than half the looks in Rick Owens’s spring 2011 collection, which WWD calls “one of the season’s strongest,” included sumptuous floor-grazing hemlines. Owens said after the show that he hoped women would wear the gowns “to the grocery store. If you wash it, tone down the colours and minimise it, that can happen. I hope you will see these dresses on the beach — I definitely see them on the beach!” And he’s definitely seen them on the beach on Michele Lamy, according to WWD:
Lamy, Owens’ wife and muse, kick-started the idea for the collection’s voluminous dresses, when this summer she requested more of the big chiffon cartwheel skirts that he did a while ago. She likes to swim in them at the beach, and watch the fabric cloud around her.
That is Owens’s idea of luxury. “That kind of opulence — meters and meters of fabric — is the most minimal, simple way to show luxury, like Dior did with the New Look. That was such a great message at that moment,” he explains. “By just piling on useless meters of fabric, there’s something so wonderfully sumptuous about that. And that’s what I was in the mood for: meters and meters of delicious fabric to spin around in.” Can you imagine having so much Rick Owens that you swim in it? That’s another way of looking at luxury.
Prince of Light [WWD]
