Rick Owens showed his SS19 womenswear collection at the Palais De Tokyo in Paris yesterday. The location is used by Owens every season, usually with some elaborate staging erected for the show.

For SS19 "BABEL," the runway encircled a wooden structure that caught alight halfway through. The show notes (printed in all capitals as is the standard practice for any literature from Rick Owens) spoke about witches, spells and hexes. The emotions that the collection tapped into were listed as "HOPE, DREAD, SERENITY, NIHILISM", with Owens also observing that his "NEEDLE ALWAYS SEEMS TO BE QUIVERING BETWEEN THEM."

Wearing face-covering, goggle-like shades (ciao tiny-sunglasses-trend! you will not be missed), and regal, metallic crowns, the models walked to a soundtrack from Russian witchhouse group ic3peak. The designs included a mix of tunics, gowns, cloaks and robes with geometric cut-outs and rubber fringes. There were also more wearable pieces like denim cut-off shorts and hiking boots in collaboration with Birkenstock, who Owens collaborated with last year. The show notes point out that the German footwear label is "POPULARLY ASSOCIATED WITH 1960S AMERICAN LIBERALISM," another tenet of the Rick Owens mythology, which he has revisited previously.

With flaming torches in hand, these designs were for the essentially idiosyncratic Rick Owens woman: powerful, transgressive, and magical. The connection between this, and the current political atmosphere of women around the globe fighting for liberation and justice was not missed.

Check out the show in the gallery above, and catch up on Rick Owens' best moments right here.