http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/01/fashion/paris-fashion-week-rick-owens-loewe.html 2016-09-30 17:52:21 Rick Owens Takes Fashion to Another Dimension Climate change has reached the catwalks, from Loewe’s modern earth mothers to Balmain’s bourgeoisie in the jungle. === PARIS — Elon Musk isn’t the only dreamer with an eye on the sky and a yen to send humanity to another world to escape the destruction we have wrought on this one. The same week Mr. Musk “I’ve been thinking about decline a lot in ecological terms,” Mr. Owens said, standing atop a winding staircase in the Palais de Tokyo, the contemporary art museum, that swirled ever lower toward the concrete bunker/basement where he holds his show. “And the way that whirlpools represent a downward spiral. But they can also be a portal to somewhere else, which opens up the possibility of positive resolution.” Certainly, in his hands it did. In one of the best collections of the week thus far, Mr. Owens twisted and torqued and draped linen tulle in frothy, cloudlike forms around the body, and shielded shoulders in transparent horsehair structures that jutted out like meteor shards. Duchesse cotton bubbled out in ovoid curves, fur was used to make curving rosettes, and floor-length capes of ostrich feathers hand-knotted into long strings floated as if in zero gravity. The palette was royal purple, sunshine yellow, cream and mauve. The effect was entirely alien, and also kind of transporting, like clothes in the process of morphing into some other, more free-form, nebulous thing. The peril of It is an oddity of the discussion raging in fashion about the absurdity of adhering to the traditional seasons, and seeing clothes you can’t buy, or wear, for six months, that the faultfinding So it makes a certain amount of sense that nature keeps appearing as a conceit, though its uses range from the superficial to the substantial. Even But if Mr. Chalayan took to the atmosphere (literal and social), at And then there was Actually new, however, was a welcome move away from the blingy basket weave body-con structure that has dominated former Balmain runways. “My Balmain army has shed its armor,” quoth Mr. Rousteing. Though the alternative — peekaboo slices of hips and ribs and waists — was only a minor advance. Much better were two sweeping, unstructured trench coats in python and rose suede. Still, they did not have the advantage of built-in air-conditioning offered by trousers slit to the thigh so they flapped around the legs like sails in search of a breeze. Environmentally friendly might be the best explanation for that one, I guess.