Rick Owens Autumn/Winter 2023 Avant Garde Menswear Collection Luxor
“If Venice, Italy, has been my summer retreat then Luxor, Egypt, has become my winter retreat. The vastness and scale line up with the cecil b. Demille fantasy of Egypt in the movie the ten commandments (art directed by Paul Iribe!), which I watch nightly while working out with brutalismus 3000 pumping through my earphones. Merging real life with fantasy life is one of my favorite things. And measuring the insignificance of contemporary discomforts against that amount of history comforts me.
I have also used embroidered imagery from nea offending performance artist Ron Athey — an old friend from Hollywood, who used Kenneth Anger’s very stylized interpretation of egyptian ceremony in his 1970s underground films as the inspiration for his performance piece incorruptible flesh, from which he graciously lent me an image.
This collection is about reduced architectural shapes with a whiff of sleazy seventies pseudo-mysticism. Sharp shoulders and high, tight waists flare to the ankle recalling an almost victorian sillhouette — a reflection of a primness we see in a prevalence of current online judgement.
Flight jkts are made in nylons made from grs (global recycled standard) certified recycled polyamide and dyed using a specialized technique that allows ecological natural pigments to be used on synthetic fibers. Black is dyed with bamboo charcoal while green is achieved using olive waste.
Tailoring is executed in a compact mohair broken twill woven on 1950s vintage shuttle looms exclusively for us by bonotto, a 4th generation textile mill founded in 1912, situated just below the pre-alps in veneto, italy.
Midi a-line skirts and spike-shouldered blousons are in 18oz japanese indigo selvedge denim. Our denim wash house in veneto, italy, uses only zdhc certified products and utilizes a water purifying process that enables them to recycle a large portion of the water used.
Outerwear and jumpsuits in heavyweight and crisp moleskins are woven in lombardy, italy using gots (global organic textile standard) certified organic cotton. The mill and family running it have roots going back to 1597.
Shaggy jackets come in heavyweight unshaven hair-on cowhides tanned in the veneto area of italy by a 2nd generation family-owned tannery that has a lwg gold rating. This ensures traceability of raw material, high environmental standards, and efficient use of energy and water consumption in the tanning process.
We continue our use of waxy and soft pirarucu fish skins. By recycling these giant skins, indigenous communities in brazil are able to receive a significant income from something that would normally be discarded. The skins are tanned in brazil through a low-impact tanning process and finished in Italy.
Cuffs and chokers produced in the outskirts of Florence are made from solid aluminum in dark bronze finish ornamented with smokey quartz crystals cut outside of Venice.
Gloves made in glossy or shaved hair-on calf leather are made by a 5th generation family company founded in 1923 and situated in the center of Naples, Italy. Each glove takes no less than 25 stages to produce, carried out strictly by hand.
There is a bitterness to creating a collection during a war — a desire to contribute our sombre best in an industry that must remain stalwart, but with a sense of frustration that nothing is enough.”
