Do you associate blackout contact lenses with villains, demons and general creepiness?
Or does “Shrek 2” come to mind, when Puss in Boots widens his pupils to the max, switching on cuteness like some superpower?
“You’ve seen those cartoon animals when they fall in love: They do this close-up of their eyes, and they get really big and black. And it’s about vulnerability and love, and those are values I like promoting,” Rick Owens said backstage before his fall show.
Aww!
All of his models wore blackout contact lenses, but they didn’t exactly look vulnerable in their ramrod-shouldered knits, imposing leather coats with Dracula-like collars, and towering platform boots.
Instead, they heightened what Owens perceives as another superpower: “otherness” and alien-like beauty.
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“Those black contacts are my version of red lipstick. We’ve lived with red lipstick for a really long time. Here’s another option,” he said. “Black contacts feel more modern, and the other thing is, red lips are a sexual signifier.”
This women’s effort skewed closely to Owens’ blockbuster men’s show last January, staged in the same venue with the same runway circuit — and many of the same clothes: handsome leather blousons with dramatic, stand-up collars; boxy woolen coats and capes streaked with industrial straps and zippers, and sculptural, millefeuille tops in frilled rubber.
They didn’t pack the same wallop, transmitting more of a grunge vibe thanks to long, tattered skirts with high slits melding denim and a dinosaur-looking leather, or a “Mad Max” mood via oversize leather bomber jackets and leather chaps with multiple straps.
There were a few gentler styles, including long, sleeveless shearling coats that blunted the severity of the sharp-shouldered jackets underneath, and lovely belted jackets in loden-colored cashmere or white leather.
As Owens commutes with carry-on luggage only between Paris and his factories in Concordia, Italy, an “industrial life” informed this collection. “Packing essentials to live this austere life of creativity in isolation,” he related. Hence, the clothes this season are harder, more rugged and less fantastical, he acknowledged.
In case you were wondering, Owens has test-driven the blackout contact lenses, wearing them for a recent photo shoot, for which he also painted his teeth black.
“I looked horrible, but it was kind of great,” he said.
