How Rick Owens' Inflatable Boots Blew Up
If there’s one thing that can be taken from Rick Owens’ Fall/Winter 2024 show on January 18, it’s not just that Rick Owens do be Rick Owens-ing — that's just a given — but that those inflatable shoes are truly insane.
Owens' menswear show, which took place inside the Californian designer’s own dystopian home on the Place du Palais Bourbon, was so stereotypically Rick Owens — lots of leather, lots of black, lots of outlandish designs — that at points felt like the 62-year-old was parodying himself.
The star of the show, those giant inflatable boots, weren’t entirely Rick Owens, though.
Instead, they are the work of Straytukay, a South African Australian, Finnish-born designer from Moscow based out of London, according to the brand’s Instagram.
Despite the intimate-yet-brutalist Parisian setting, the most memorable aspect of the entire presentation is most certainly the oversized boots, which were worn by the majority of the gothic-looking models as they meandered from room to room.
It isn’t clear, however, whether the Straytukay-designed boots are a part of a collaboration between the designer and Owens, or whether it was merely the latter giving the former a platform.
Rick Owens fanatics, or "the Tribe” as they are sometimes called, will be well aware that this isn’t the first time he and Straytukay have teamed up.
Late last year, the pair united for an exclusive Dover Street Market upcycling capsule that went about reconfiguring and repurpose deadstock materials from Owens' archive.
“I’ve tried to teach my Instagram algorithm to seek out the weirdest and most reckless talent and self-invention, and that’s how I ran across Straytukay,” said Owens in an statement at the time.
“So I invited him [Straytukay] to root through our deadstock and reconfigure what I had done into what he wanted to do. Like I always say, we have a way to go but we can all start somewhere.”
Owens’ FW24 show, all things considered, was a wildly bizarre affair in line with the designer's oeuvre. And while the amusingly outré setting, models, and styling were typical of Owens, it was Straytukay’s inflatable boots that really stole the show by standing out even further than the lord of darkness himself.
