The Rick Owens show made mountains out of, not molehills, but menswear, combining slate-grey shearling (with snow-white taping), shadowy forms in black leather, massive sleeping bag coats as big as the Tetons and one or two flickers of pale blue suggestive of thin mountain air. Are you ready to make the ascent? No need to pack scarves: Rick designed them as part of the coats themselves. But rarefied fashion heights like these may require extra oxygen.

Rick also played against volume, showing the skinniest of skinny suits on an entire corps of rail-thin young men. He opened the show with a striking series of white tops and slim, high-waisted pants, and as the models moved in staggered groups down the enormous runway, they suggested a looming mass of snow-capped mountains marching steadily down to meet the plains.

Rick’s idea of heaven is to wear a black robe every single day, and there were certainly a few floor-length skirts in this collection (for those who choose to wear them). For the rest of us, Rick is savvy enough to offer plenty of chic, smart jackets that might not save a life on Mount Everest, but will protect a man from the elements in the glass-and-steel canyons of New York.

––Mark Grischke

Photographs by Stéphane Israël