Rick Owens’ Fall 2025 ‘Essentials’ Include Thermals and Bronze Luggage
What does potty time have to do with Rick Owens’ incredible fall men’s collection?
Chatting before his show on Thursday, the designer cited a wish to pare back his personal belongings, while making sure that “the few things I need that are really essential are as special as possible, like a toilet seat.”
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“When you go to somebody’s house, they can have Picassos on the wall, but then you go into their powder room and they have a white plastic toilet seat. It just doesn’t make sense.”
For the record, Owens plants his bottom on “marble in Paris, onyx in Concordia and marble in Lido.”
The designer said he adopts a similar attitude when making clothes, relating that in his 22 years of shuttling between the French capital, the small industrial town of Concordia, Italy, and his Venice apartment, he only does carry-on luggage to ferry indispensables.
For example, “when I discovered long johns a few years ago in Europe, it just changed winters for me,” he related.
(Suitcases came up because he has a new collaboration with Rimowa, his version bronze in color and lined in black leather, launching on Jan. 30.)
Owens will surely tempt more men to pack thermals, oversize monastic hoodies, flaring pants and what must be the coolest, most arresting blousons and overcoats this European season.
Was it the blaring Bowie anthem “Heroes,” or the sheer beauty of his clothes — especially the dramatic, stand-up-collar coats, and the otherworldly Eiffel Tower silhouette that emerged below the ribcage — that unleashed such a powerful emotional charge?
It was also moving to see Owens conscript not only his regular beanpole models, but also more mature men with thick midriffs, who looked terrific in boxier woolen coats streaked with industrial zippers.
Many designers are chatting about essentials this season, but Owens’ basics — via the purity of his designs and their superhero aura — command your attention, and stir desire for a new black leather jacket, a majestically minimal park, or a “Dracu-collared” overcoat to block the wind and unkind stares.
They also reflect a designer who thinks deeply about his designs, takes seriously his responsibility as a beacon of cultural aesthetics and relishes all the hard work.
“It’s about me schlepping to a factory all the time and kind of reveling in the wonder and glamour of it all,” he said. “For me, finishing and resolving what a runway collection is going to be like by myself in the middle of the night in a factory in Concordia, Italy, that’s the most glamorous Saturday night for me ever.”
Launch Gallery: Backstage at Rick Owens Men's Fall 2025 Ready-to-Wear Collection
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