At a time when sex and censorship are on everyone's minds, Rick Owens – fashion's king of kink – has entered unchartered territory: male nudity. During his AW15 'SPHINX' show, the designer sent models down the runway in oversized peep-hole garments that gave the audience a flash of bare skin beneath as they walked – and in a few cases, revealed their penises.
Susie Bubble, Dazed's representative at the show, said: "I liked that you hardly noticed it. It wasn't nudity for the sake of nudity. I honestly didn't see until somebody pointed out the dick flaps and the undie holes."
Famously, Owens isn't afraid of dealing with sex as a subject matter. Last season's show was a homage to a moment in Nijinksy's 1912 ballet "Afternoon of a Faun", where a faun masturbates over his lost nymph's scarf. At the time, Owens said of the ballet's climactic point: “Everybody in the audience, with all their jewels, are just waiting for this guy to hump the scarf. I love that!”
The designer also called on legendary S&M photographer Rick Castro to shoot his 93-year-old father for his AW14 lookbook, a selection of photographs that reaffirmed Owens's position as playfully confrontational when it comes to the human body.
We've had #freethenipple – now is it time to #freethepeen?
Update: “Nudity is the most simple and primal gesture” – read what Owens had to say backstage about his full-frontal fashion statement.
