Rick Owens Swimming Gowns

You've heard of a bathing suit, you've heard of a bikini, you've heard of a monokini, you've even heard of a mankini - but have you heard of a swimming gown? Rick Owens, designer extraordinaire would like to change that. If he has his way, women will be wading into oceans around the globe wearing enough fabric to sail a boat with. Whilst this might please conservative parties, it does make one question whether or not this is a good idea.

According to Rick and his wife Michele, his sumptuous gowns featuring oodles and oodles of extra, entirely unecessary fabric are perfect for swimming in. This intrepid fashion blogger is pretty certain that wearing bunches and bunches of unecessary fabric and having it siwlring about you as you try to navigate the high seas is probably a good recipe for drowning, but then again, what would I know, never having tried to wear a gown into the ocean. Perhaps the excessive fabric will cause a pod of frolicsome dolphins to come to your aid and float you off to an aquatic never never land, where everyone is perpetually overdressed and where you can marry the ocean king.

WWD Fashion reported: Lamy, Owens’ wife and muse, kick-started the idea for the collection’s voluminous dresses, when this summer she requested more of the big chiffon cartwheel skirts that he did a while ago. She likes to swim in them at the beach, and watch the fabric cloud around her.

Rick also chimed in with his own desires to see the dresses not only at the beach and in the ocean, but also in the grocery store. Apparently wearing a flowing gown to the grocery store is a very minimalistic sort of thing to do, and wasting vast amounts of fabric isn't at all a horrid thing to dom instead it is poetic and wonderful. As Rick himself said: "By just piling on useless meters of fabric, there’s something so wonderfully sumptuous about that. And that’s what I was in the mood for: meters and meters of delicious fabric to spin around in."

I want to live in Rick Owens' world, it sounds pleasant there.

Interestingly enough, Rick Owens also designs a great many form fitting, sleek dresses that probably wouldn't drag you down to Davy Jones' locker if you went swimming in them, but he doesn't recommend them for swimming, rather he has those reserved for mountain climbing. (I'm kidding of course, they're obviously far more suited to racing a formula one car through the Gobi desert.)