“I wanted to capture that longing for summer and the way summer makes you feel... that fantasy moment of the summer months when you reconnect with yourself,” said the 42-year-old, who trained at London’s Central Saint Martins art school.

Owens’s ageless American gothic

All this talk of summer was happening while Paris was being washed away by a day-long deluge. But the clouds suddenly cleared as if by miracle for the dark angels of Rick Owens, the cult Californian designer with his own post-apocalyptic groove of American gothic.

You may not know his name, but Owens is something of a style giant with an unmistakable look and ideas -- particularly on shoes, bags and shoulders -- that often break through to the street or into the shop windows of bigger, richer brands.

This time Owens marched 200 mostly amateur models -- his fans, friends and fashion students -- around the ravaged architectural grandeur of the Palais de Tokyo’s marble garden, while gloomy valkyries dropped white petals from the roof of the French capital’s “anti-museum”.

This being his spring-summer collection, the color palette went from black to blacker -- the great Chicano maverick never being one to make concessions to convention.—AFP