Fashion Week can be a tiring business for all involved, so we imagine it was something of a relief when the models who'd passed the casting for Rick Owens Paris show were told they'd be carried down the runway. They hung limply, tied like backpacks from a troupe of dancers, to unveil Owen's latest boundary-pushing collection.
The decision to have models walk two-by-two in such an intimate fashion wasn't just in the name of spectacle though, it was to show female strength in what Owens described as a celebration of "love, humanity, sensibility, femininity, and womanhood."
You might recall Owens equally head-turning SS16 Menswear collection - it's hard to forget if you saw the photos - where male models walked in smocks cutaway to leave their manhoods on full display. And Owens explained that his equally subversive womens show is a follow-up: "In the Spring men’s collection which shares the same name (Cyclops), that focussed vision was propulsive and aggressive. When applied to women’s, I see that focussed vision being more about nourishment, sisterhood/motherhood and regeneration; women raising women, women becoming women, and women supporting women – a world of women I know little about and can only attempt to amuse in my own small way."
And of the decision to have the women literally strapped on to their runway partners, he explained: "Straps can be about restraint but here they are all about support and cradling. Straps here become loving ribbons."