The American fashion designer Rick Owens is known for operating at the extremes. Obsessed with the dark and the monolithic, his distinct aesthetic often sees the body distorted, turned upside down, sprouted with prosthetics, or strapped with wadded structures he calls ‘duvet donuts’. And earlier this summer he hosted perhaps the blockbuster runway show of the year: his take on a Hollywood epic, complete with a hundreds-strong ‘white satin army of love’ which marched around the forecourt of the Palais de Tokyo, some hanging from enormous scaffolding structures, amid plumes of smoke.
Revealed today, on Halloween – a date no doubt noted by fashion’s so-called prince of darkness – Owens explores the idea of ‘extremes’ in his latest collaboration with outerwear behemoth Moncler. Titled by the designer as ‘another Moncler + Rick Owens living project’, it follows a customised bus (designed for touring Land Art installations) and an isolation sleeping chamber (‘it ended up in my house,’ says Owens), which both came complete with matching wardrobes to wear in these ‘personal environments’. The latest edition is a ‘mountain refuge’, created alongside Hugh Broughton Architects, a London-based agency known for its extreme-condition structures (they include the Halley VI British Antarctic Research Station on the Brunt Ice Shelf and the redevelopment of the Scott Base in Antarctica).
