STRAPPING YOUNG LASSES
Rick Owens’ SS16 Womens show Cyclops was performed in a Parisian bunker, with rough concrete floors and bare columns, and was presided over by three soul singers in long black gowns, who solemnly delivered This Land is Mine, the theme from the movie Exodus. The looks were built from layered sheaths that wrapped the body like space-age saris, pulling taut across the backside and bunching up in front like broken fenders, in shades of black, putty, pale saffron and stale mint. The whole affair was what one expects of Owens: bold, arty, gothic, tribal and street.
What elevated the show to theater was its procession. Every third model carried around her another model: strapped to her back like a knapsack, cradled to her stomach like a infant, or hooked around her neck by the knees like a stethoscope. The spectacle of each of these women (slender, straight-faced, serene) carrying another live, full-blooded woman through the show, strapped in place with a harness, was effecting. Their poses were awkward, athletic, and strangely asexual. The pairs looked less like lovers than like conjoined sisters, grappling enemies, twin demons. Their positions recalled the famous Annie Leibowitz photograph of Leigh Bowery hauling his wife Nicola Bateman over his belly like a fetus. But Owens’ show wasn’t a statement about birth and maternal power. It was about finding grace in extremes, a punk ballet.