Moving away from his usual spot at the Palais de Tokyo, on what would have been a particularly cold and snow-spattered show, Rick Owens staged his Fall/Winter collection in a location close to his heart: his concrete palace of an apartment. In this three-story townhouse on the Place du Palais Bourbon, Owens rendered a dystopian elysian, responding to our violent, unprecedented times.

A host of models, including close friends and collaborators, presented the collection (titled ‘Porterville’, after his childhood hometown). The models were transformed into unworldly creatures, haunting the stripped-down, cavernous and brutalist living and dining rooms—save a few OWENSCORP furniture pieces and Anselm Kiefer and Huma Bhabha artworks. Porterville is positioned between the Sierra Nevada mountains and the San Joaquin Valley, where nature and industry are forced to collide given the drastic industrial development that occurs close to the national parks.

Owens continued his unique exploration of the grotesque and the deformed, developing a preoccupation with blown-up, bulbous proportions that saw torsos exposed to emphasise the tension and cohesion created between organic textiles and geometric human figures. Formally, we also saw experimental silhouette elaborations: silver orb pendants bracing models’ chests; sculptural shoulder pads raised above head height, each slightly softer and rounder than last season’s; denim looks were treated with foil and covered with wax, perhaps drawing attention to Owens’ environmental concerns for luxury fashion. Ballooned pants with rubber pull boots, created in collaboration with Straytukay, swelled at the models’ calves and were one of the collection’s most notable highlights. As were the spherical fur globe pieces (Looks 18–20) that evoked his iconic fur works from the early 2000s. The leather work in the collection was even more impressive for its almost matte finish, which appeared like liquified butter—supple and fluid.

Community was central to this collection: jackets and pants were made from recycled bicycle tyres in collaboration with Matisse Di Maggio, and Steven and Hannah of Fecal Matter and Gena Marvin joined in the celebrations.

Genre-defying and thought-provoking, Owens’ collection ruminated on the various demands of our social, cultural and political times.  Here, we were presented with an alternative uniform for our howling new world.