The invitation for Rick Owens’ latest menswear show – at Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2024 – was a loop of jersey fabric, stitched with ‘Porterville’, the collection’s title. It is also the name of the town in which a young Owens grew up, located at the base of California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range. He has credited its vast landscapes for his love of the monumental – as well as being a site of teenage angst and yearning – all elements that continue to pulsate through the designer’s work. ‘I remember the small brutalities of a sensitive childhood in a judgemental country,’ he wrote in a letter released just before the show’s start.
