Bare breasts and rear ends have seemingly been the classic accessory for women’s fashion shows, but Rick Owens’ F/W ’15 show at Paris fashion week has got balls.
We saw Kim and Nicki squat it out for 2014, but 2015 ushers in Jonas, Beiber and now #DickOwens.
“Flaccid penis” is not a term most can say seriously without a giggle or mocking tone, which is probably why social media took to Owen’s show and his models like a pack of hyenas.
Owens’ collection entitled “Sphinx,” features your classic pea coat and sweater mix with a few wild card pieces of reversible tunics subtly bearing jock.
Owens told Women’s Wear Daily, “I’m thinking of this moment of suspense – sphinx, they are glamorous, exotic and mysterious, but I also think of a vessel…”
The vessel on the designer’s mind was “Submarine,” the 1928 French silent film in which a love triangle is formed between two best friends and a woman. Love and betrayals lead to one man being stuck in a submarine at the bottom of the ocean and the other to his rescue.
Always walking a thin line in the name of art, Owens is no newcomer to kinky messages in his collections. His show last season for S/S ’15 was inspired by the Nijinsky 1912 ballet, “Afternoon of a Faun,” in which the audience watches a real faun masturbate on a nymph’s scarf.
Sphinx is said to embody the unraveling of a proper man into the child-like primal tendencies of men in a confined state, earnestly revealing a man’s member as the show goes on.
Setting the scene with an industrial submarine feel, the show began with stunningly strong and structured leather pea coat ensembles to something much softer and raw (no pun intended) creating something so truly beautiful that it surpassed the commercial debut of clothes to buy and truly represented the art form that is fashion.
Owens defies gender standards, complementing the idea of women’s menswear and offers instead men’s womenswear. Male models donning skirts and dresses are not out of place at a Rick Owens fashion shows because of the elaborate fairy tale world he has created encompassing them.
But why is a revealing runway walk ground breaking news in the fashion industry when women are expected to bear flesh year-round on and off the catwalk? Why is it so shocking and embarrassing for a man’s body to be placed under the same light as a woman’s?
Perhaps because men have never been shown in such a vulnerable way that women are, and perhaps because we might finally see the hypocrisy of how our bodies are valued differently.