inspired by goth, punk and glam rock, Rick owens unconventional designs are the talk of todays fashion

scene. Maybe its because the raw, twisted seams, unfinished hems, and dark colors so perfectly reflect an imperfect world

MasteR of DisasteR
ARTetc.
By Eugene Rabkin 20

ick Owens, an American designer who lives and works in Paris, is the last person who would tell you hes a rebel. Draped in a black cashmere shawl that could be the flag of his multimillion dollar fashion label which produces aggressive clothing with elements of goth and punk Owens sits at one of the tables in his showroom-cum-studio-cum-apartment

on Place de Palais Bourbon in Paris. It is the morning after his Fall-Winter 2009 menswear runway show, his first in a couple of years and an instant hit. The rave reviews have already come out in the fashion press, and the firstfloor showroom swarms with buyers from all over the world. The showroom is long and narrow, lined with racks of Owens signature slim leather jackets, asymmetric tailored coats, and featherweight rayon Tshirts. His chunky black boots (including a mens pair featuring a five-inch heel), oversized sneakers and huge leather bags are displayed in the adjacent room. The main room has a glass wall at the back with a door that opens onto a courtyard. Two stuffed monkeys on a stand (Owens is fascinated with monkeys) are the rooms only decoration. Black-clad assistants rush around filling orders; tall, skinny boys model clothes for the buyers, putting them

Photos by Getty Images

on and ripping them off at the speed of light; and the phone rings off the hook. Owens sips coffee and butters his raisin toast, unaffected by the hubbub. His tanned face, with its expressive brown eyes and long black hair, is absolutely calm and just a little bit weary. His voice is calming in itself, a relaxed Californian drawl, interrupted by sincere, warm laughter. Owens has a welcoming presence about him. Excuse me, I have to go hug somebody, he says, getting up to greet Alan Bilzerian of the eponymous Boston boutique. Coming back in a few minutes, he says, That was Alan. He hasnt been feeling well lately, so naturally I am worried. Though the fashion world often claims it loves a rebel, it rarely welcomes one. Owens is one of the few exceptions who has not only survived in this cutthroat business, but has also prospered. He was born in Los Angeles in 1961.

His family soon moved to Porterville, a small town halfway between LA and San Francisco. As a teenager in high school, Owens got into goth culture. Wearing black was a way to project a more menacing demeanor and to hide my insecurities, he says. Still, those years have left a permanent imprint on his style. There is nothing polished about his designs the raw and twisted seams, the unfinished hems, and the earthy colors emphasize his desire to reflect a world that is imperfect. This is probably what first attracted me to his clothes they firmly insist on imperfection. They defy the glamour fantasy that popular culture, fashion included, tries to cram down our throats.

The double
After finishing high school, Owens moved back to Los Angeles to study

painting at Otis College of Art and Design. He dropped out in his second year and got a job as a pattern maker in a sportswear company owned by Michele Lamy, a French expatriate who lived in Los Angeles for many years. Owens and Lamy soon began an affair. At the time Lamy was married and Owens, who is bisexual, had a boyfriend. After some time, they left their significant others and moved in together. Lamy closed the sportswear business and opened a restaurant, and Owens started making clothes. They have been together for 19 years. Lamy descends the stairs and Owens introduces us. She makes quite an impression, especially if you have never seen her before. In her sixties, she is petite and fierce. Her piercing blue eyes, deeply set in her dark face, are inquisitive and glow with energy. She is dressed in an alligator vest, with a fur vest on top of it, gray and black

tights with a rectangle pattern, and over-the-knee boots. A huge oxidized silver necklace resembling a cross hangs around her neck. She looks like a Viking queen magically transported into the 21st Century; I found myself wishing she carried a sword. You know, the first two years we lived together, I couldnt understand a word she was saying, says Owens, and not because of the French accent, but because she is a very instinctual person she doesnt finish sentences, she has no regard for punctuation, she talks with her hands, and its all very vague, whereas I am really a very pragmatic person. But thats exactly what I need. Their life together in Los Angeles was infused with drugs and alcohol, but today both of them are completely sober. Owens works out almost every day, even while visiting his factory in Italy. I work out and then I come home and take a little nap. I need this time

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to myself. Otherwise I get oversaturated. When I used to live in Los Angeles I had a personal trainer and would take steroids. I love steroids they get you to a higher level when you work out. Of course I got too puffy, but they helped me to build up the muscle, and once I lost all that top weight, I was in good shape. Owens body is now slim and muscular, and he does not mind displaying it. His store in Palais-Royal features a nude wax statue of him that Owens commissioned from the artisans at Madame Tussauds. This statue was first displayed in 2006 at Pitti Uomo, an Italian menswear fashion fair. It was suspended in the air, the hands holding the penis, out of which a stream of fake urine poured onto shattered glass. In the store, the lower part of the statue is covered by a black blanket. Once, Rick was in the store adjusting the blanket on the statue, and some people came into the store and were staring at one Rick fiddling with another Ricks groin, recalled Barbara Ayme Jouve, the stores managing partner, and I said, Rick, there are people staring at you, and he turns around, smiles, and drops the blanket. Owenss fascination with the double is apparent elsewhere in a book of his photographs, LAi-Je Bien Descendu? (How Did You Like My Descent?), there is a picture of Owens urinating into his doppelgangers mouth.

Perseverance pays
Rick Owens with Michele Lamy in Paris. She is a very instinctual person.
Photo by Getty Images

For a while, Owens and Lamy lived in a rented apartment off Hollywood

Boulevard. Lamy spent most of her time at the restaurant and Owens concentrated on his designs. He avoided the fashion world like the plague. Right from the beginning I steered clear of the editors, PR companies and stylists I went straight to the stores I thought highly of, the ones that got fashion. I simply showed up with a bag of clothes at their door and I wouldnt leave until I met with the owner. His perseverance paid off. Owens first got his clothes into Charles Gallay in Los Angeles, and then cut an exclusive deal with Maxfield after Charles Gallay closed. By going directly to the stores, Owens let his clothes speak for themselves, and people responded to his language of destroyed luxury. His talent for combining elegance with grit manifested itself in washed shrunken-leather jackets with super-slim arms and cashmere T-shirts whose seams were irreverently shredded. This was beauty of another sort, without the fatuous glitter. By the end of the decade, Owens name started to make its rounds in the fashion circles, finally reaching Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue. Wintour gave Owens prominent coverage in the magazine, which also sponsored his first runway show in 2002, seven years after he started selling clothes in stores. In the same year, with Wintours influence, Owens received an award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Soon after, Owens developed a financial relationship with Luca Ruggeri and Elsa Lanzo, whose investment firm, EBA, partnered with young designers. From the start, Ruggeri had full confidence in Owens. I first saw Ricks work at Maria Luisa [a Parisian boutique], says Ruggeri, and I was immediately intrigued. I had never seen such unconventional clothes anywhere. I asked the owner who the designer was, because I had never heard of him. Next time I was in Los Angeles, I looked Rick up. We had a meeting and we hit it off. Ruggeri invested in Owens, and found an Italian manufacturer for him, Olmar and Mirta. It is a real mom-and-pop operation, Owens says, and its in the middle of nowhere. Theyd never seen anything like my designs, and it was hard to make them understand what I wanted to do. I lived six months of the year in the factory, because the town didnt have a hotel. They were really nice to me, though they gave me a room with a couch, which also doubled as my office, and built a shower for me. Around the same time, Owens was hired as a creative director for Revillon, an old French fur company. Finally, shuttling between Los Angeles and Europe became unbearable and in 2003 Owens and Lamy moved to Paris. Today Owens feels at home in the City of Lights. From my place I walk through the Tuileries gardens to Palais-Royal [his boutique near the Louvre], and to my gym. To say that its my neighborhood is amazing. When we first moved and we would drive through Place de la Concorde on the way home, I would think, Thats incredible. Thats what my life is like now. And to tell you the truth, now every once in a while I forget to notice all this splendor and I get mad at myself. Despite the move, Owens remains close to his parents in Porterville, I bring them to Paris twice a year for my womens shows. First it was a huge deal for my parents to come here, because they are from a small town and they

never traveled, but now they are bored with Paris. I like bringing them here because they are still protective of me, and I like to feel that. Of course they can be overpowering, especially my Dad. He used to be a real fundamentalist. He has mellowed out now, but he still will say something hilarious, like, Dont you know any heterosexuals? I think that my success has forced him to come to terms with my way of life. Money changes everything. I still tease him sometimes. Hell introduce me to someone and say, This is my son. He is a businessman in fashion, and Ill say, I dont know anything about business; Im just a big sissy making dresses.

Drugstore cowboy
The French have a notoriously ambivalent relationship with American culture, and Owens was unsure about the reception he would get designing for Revillon. An American designing for a venerable old French house is not exactly the kind of thing that bowls them over, but I did not care. I dont believe in revitalization of old fashion houses. Its a pussy thing to do, just for the paycheck. Its so much more hardcore to do your own thing. So I did not feel the weight of tradition or anything like that, and I started from scratch. I think in the end I won them over. It is hard to say what the French love in Owens. Maybe it was his gig at Revillon, which lasted briefly before the company went out of business. Or maybe their fascination with Owens was akin to that of a complacent bourgeois watching a Western. And here was a drugstore cowboy of their own weird, unconventional and the complete opposite of them. Perhaps this enigmatic image is what lures celebrities to his work, because Owens is currently in the spotlight. The online and print tabloids are full of pictures of stars (Jennifer Aniston, Lindsay Lohan, the Olsen twins, Victoria Beckham) wearing Owens clingy tees and shrunken leather jackets. Not to be outdone, male pop royalty like John Mayer and Justin Timberlake have made Owens jumbo sneakers, which retail for $1,400, their footwear of choice. Owens is aware that his designs are becoming trendy, but this does not bother him. He is confident that this glitzy exposure will not alienate his long-time fans. I am pleased that people respond to my work, its validating. And validation, as Oprah Winfrey says, is one of the most important things in life. I am very lucky that all kinds of people respond to my work. Seeing someone in my clothes always makes me happy. I cant think of the downside. Despite being financially successful, Owens expands his business carefully. It now comprises a main line for men and women, a denim line, a midrange womens line called Lilies, a line of furs called Palais-Royal, and a furniture line that Owens sells in a Paris art gallery. The furniture came out of nowhere, really, says Owens. Once we got to Paris, I couldnt afford the furniture that I liked, because I wanted original stuff from Le Corbusier and Robert MalletStevens. Besides, I like everything to be oversized, and everything I saw was so small. So I made my own stuff. Then we decided to show it at a gallery, and it kind of stuck.

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Today Owens has six assistants three in Italy and three in Paris. Manufacturing in Italy was not an easy transition. In LA I was used to working in an isolated and reclusive way. All of a sudden, I had to communicate my ideas and respond to a lot of people, and I am not that gregarious. His designs sell in 300 stores worldwide and he has boutiques in Paris and New York. His third store will open in London in March, and he is exploring potential retail partnerships in South Korea and Japan. Still, Owens considers his company small, and he is comfortable with that. Because we are a niche company, I can afford not to change from season to season and thus I can insist on my own voice. I have an audience that I communicate with, and it is fairly small. If I had to communicate with a much larger audience, that would be far more challenging. This way, I can go as far as I want, and I have no restraints. It is a tremendously luxurious place to be. Yet, Owens is pragmatic: Of course, I am not irresponsible I know that I have to sell a certain amount of leather jackets in order to be able to play with fur, for example, and I know that I have to have several T-shirts in every collection. But these are not compromises. Although he wants to expand, Owens is wary of overdoing it and alienating his core customers. He wants to create a perfume, and he has been talking to several beauty conglomerates. In order to do the perfume right, with a big company, you have to advertise. But I am very reluctant to advertise. When I first saw a Yohji Yamamoto perfume ad, I kind of cringed, precisely because I have utter respect for Yohjis work. I would not want the same thing happening to me. At the same time, some of my closest friends have urged me to do a perfume and advertise it. At first I resisted. Then I realized that they are looking for a certain fashion moment. I remember those Comme des Garcons perfume ads with the ghetto kids with the braces, or the first minimalist Helmut Lang ads these were fashion moments. Still, I am not going to advertise because of the cringe-inducing sellout element, unless I find the right way to do it. Nevertheless, the perfume is on Owens agenda. He wants to capture his fascination with life and death in a scent. I think the bottom note would be something like incense, to reflect death, Owens says, and the top note would probably smell like a lily, to reflect life. And maybe Ill add some menthol to that. In general Owens is content with his work. I hear people talking about me going to the next level. What is this next level? I have enough work; I get to express myself every minute of my life. I am very happy to be where I am right now. I dont have to deal with the social pressure or with people intruding in my life just because I am famous. The money will come we have a steady business and I hope it continues this way. Smiling, he adds, Of course, thats my attitude now. Who knows what Ill want in two years. Owens understands that fashion is fickle and in constant demand of the new, but his designs are based on consistency. People always ask me if I will run out of ideas. And really, Ive

got them all. I just need to sort them out and slowly develop them. Jumping from one thing to another is not for me. I feel like people do it because they dont know who they are. Maintaining the delicate balance between artistry and commerce is something that Owens hopes to teach his protege, a promising young London designer named Gareth Pugh, famous for his theatrical presentations. I applaud Gareths vision and I am his most ardent supporter, but he is going to have to learn to produce wearable clothing in order to stay in business and experiment with the more extreme stuff. I was just trying on some of his clothes before the show and I told him that I will gladly carry it in my store in black, Owens says as the last shipment of clothes for Pughs collection arrives, just a day before the show.

Eternal dust
Owens draws inspiration from different sources his own life is obviously one of them. Goth culture is reflected heavily in his designs, but also punk and glam rock. Modernist architecture and sculpture are among his other influences. Its like a little ritual for me I look at the work of Brancusi, Le Corbusier, Luigi Moretti; all of these clean lines that are in exactly the right places in their work remind me that I dont have to make a lot of changes, I dont have to add some more straps to make it interesting, I dont have to do anything superfluous. And all of their creations fit in perfectly with the environment they are in, and thats what I try to do. Of course my environment is a fantasy. The fantasy that Owens manifests in his clothes is apparent in everything he does from his fascination with artifice and camp, to the names of the colors he uses for his designs: milk, pearl, dust and dark shadow. The only color untouched by a name is black. Dust is such an eternal, biblical word, says Owens, that has become representative of everything I wanted to project. In the beginning, almost everything was light gray. Ive been wearing black all throughout my adolescence and young adulthood, and when I look back I see that as an expression of fear. I was hiding behind black. I have come to look at it almost as a sign of weakness, and began thinking that gray is a brave color to wear, because there is ambiguity and gentleness to it; it is modest, restrained and dignified, tender and not aggressive. Black is an exclusive color, and dust is inclusive. We all become dust. So that name stuck. And dark shadow, well, that was just a pretty name for a color. The influence of architecture extends to Owens choice of fabrics. When I am looking at a new fabric, I think, Will this work in a Jean-Michel Frank room? I like fabrics that are either casual but used in a sumptuous way, or sumptuous but used in a casual way. I have good relationships with the mills I use, and they are willing to experiment with me. This way I can create fabric mixes from scratch. I still work on the fabrics a lot. I feel like Ive done many experiments with the silhouette, but I havent manipulated the fabric itself enough. This season I worked with a tapestry maker to get a

certain texture and it ended up looking like Polynesian place mats you buy at a gift shop. It was awful. But its a start. In the current mens collection Owens added a substantial amount of tailoring, whose structure also reminds him of architecture. I am trying to add more tailoring, but its a nightmare. I cant find a tailor who can understand what I want. The traditional tailors are so uptight about the classic silhouette. It is very hard to do something new. You are dealing with someone who is proud of their creativity, and you have to in turn dominate them with your vision without disrespecting them. The architects respond to Owens. Andrew Dryden, of the architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group in Copenhagen, is a big fan of his work. I love the raw feelings of Ricks clothes, the sharply cut forms and his ability to play with proportion that goes to the extreme without becoming cartoonish, he says. The clothes are both refined and crude, graceful and gothic there is a balance between heavy brutalism and grace. When I put on his clothes, I feel like they are an extension of myself.

We love his work precisely because it is so architectural. It does not merely conform to human anatomy, but tries to go beyond it. And they wore the clothes to prove it. Greenland had on a pair of Owens jeans, which are usually in high demand, a long-sleeved tee, and a leather motorcycle vest. Youf sported one of Owens leather jackets, whose clean geometric lines formed two triangles that extended away from the body at the top and bottom. The jacket looked like something out of Transformers. To complete this extreme ensemble, she wore Owens silver over-the-knee boots with wedge heels that slanted 45 degrees. Two large shopping bags full of Owens garments they had just purchased stood in front of them.

Shopping at Palais-Royal
A few hours later after interviewing Owens, I sat on a low-slung couch in his Paris store, observing the scene. The gallery of shops at Palais-Royal frames a beautiful tree-lined garden. People stroll past the small boutiques, peering in through the windows. The store occupies a small two-story space. The first floor is divided into two rooms one displaying menswear and the other womens clothes. The top floor has only one room, which houses sale merchandise and a rack of jackets from Owens fur line. The interior of the store is done in earth colors the walls are painted offwhite and the floors and birch plywood displays are covered in brown carpet. Brown wool felt blankets are wrapped around the buildings internal fixtures and brown curtains cover the windows. Each of the rooms on the first floor has a sculpture created by Owens moose horns supported by two ostrich eggs and a skull. The eggs symbolize life, the skull death, and the moose horns, honor. The infamous wax statue towers over the first floor cash register. Owens store in London will feature his head, carved in wax, on a plate. As Owens told one publication, Dazed Digital, he was going for a more classical mood. The boutique was swarming with people. The Parisian haute bourgeois, with their lapdogs in hand, mingled with Italians in their mandatory overembellished jeans. French teenagers and young Japanese tourists tried on Owens sneakers. Three middle-aged Russians walked in and strolled around. The woman turned to her companions and said, This guy is hot right now. They walked over to the display case by the shop window and stared at the five-inch heels. Those are for men, one of them giggled, and they left. Very few of the people in the store looked like die-hard Rick Owens clients, except for one couple. Tony Greenland and Pascale Youf of the London architecture firm Seventh Wave, are ardent supporters of Owens. Every few months they travel from London to Paris just to shop at his store.

I am not goIng to advertIse because of the crIngeInducIng sellout element, unless I fInd the rIght way to do It.
Barbara Ayme Jouve, the managing partner at Palais-Royal, dashed between the rooms, balancing a tray with coffee for one customer in one hand and a leather jacket for another customer in the other. Four other sales assistants were helping her. A striking California blond, Jouve has lived and worked in Paris for the past 15 years. She wore a tight black leather jacket, a black skirt, and a pair of black boots all by Owens, of course. Her striking blue eyes glowed with enthusiasm as she surveyed the store. Before going to work with Owens, Jouve managed another store housed in the same space that went out of business. When Owens approached her about a retail partnership she didnt have any second thoughts, and it worked out really well. We were flipping through the book of Owens photos when the phone rang. It was Bruce Springsteens stylist. Bruce wants those black jeans. He loves the first pair so much, he wont wear anything else. Please send them right away. (Springsteen wore a pair of black waxed jeans for his Super Bowl performance.) The people kept walking in and out. The staff no longer bothered with the doorbell, leaving the door ajar. I remembered Owens words, I am happy to sell to anyone. I am glad people relate to my work. It certainly felt like it.
eugene Rabkin teaches critical writing at Parsons the New school for Design in New York City.

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