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Paris-based designer Rick Owens has been known as many issues in his lengthy profession. An antihero, a goth, vogue’s “prince of darkness.” He’s been labeled as such due to his proclivity for a largely noir, grey and ice-hued oeuvre, his deployment of pentagram motifs on underwear or elk antlers on furnishings, and an general aesthetic that’s – and he’d agree with this – rapturously anti-establishment.
“I get it, I mean, it’s easy to categorize somebody. I summarize things quickly, too. I suppose being called goth isn’t the worst thing,” he says throughout a sit down interview atop the Palais de Tokyo, two days earlier than the revealing of his Spring-Summer 2022 assortment at Paris Fashion Week. “It’s like this: There’s Disney World, where you can go to find something very clean and that denies the discomforts and horrors that really exist in life. And there’s the non-Disney World, where you’ll find somebody like me, who acknowledges and tries to figure out how to accept those things and how to manage those things. When you acknowledge it, when you deal with mortality, when you deal with threat, then, yeah, it’s dark compared to Disney. I’m fine with it.”
Owens, who’s half American and half Mexican (his mom is from Puebla, only a few hours exterior of Mexico City), was born and raised in Porterville, California, earlier than launching his namesake line in Los Angeles in 1994. He relocated to Paris in 2003 along with his accomplice Michèle Lamy, and now lives between the French capital and Venice, Italy’s Lido, the place he retains a penthouse flat that overlooks the ocean (and the place, in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, he staged and filmed intimate runway reveals; Thursday’s Paris catwalk marked his return to the town after a yr and a half).
His label, which stays majority owned by him and Lamy, is a hit story – to the tune of a whole lot of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in income per yr, due to his foremost assortment, his diffusion strains, a furnishings assortment, model partnerships and extra. He has obtained quite a few accolades, together with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and is an business darling regardless of remaining, to many, a little bit of a darkish horse. He’s additionally grow to be an increasing number of of a star favourite, beloved by stars akin to Lil Uzi Vert, Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, and Timothée Chalamet, who layered Rick Owens into his latest Met Gala look.
Above all, Owens, who turns 60 in November, could also be among the many most unfiltered designers working right now – it’s a trait that’s uncommon, particularly when many luxurious manufacturers fall below closely patrolled company approval processes and security stops. His honesty is refreshing: “I like bombast, yet there’s been anger all along. I grew up in such a conservative, judgy town, and it filled me with so much rage,” says Owens. “I’m still operating on that rage. This is my revenge. I’m still vengeful. I’m still a vengeful Scorpio.”
Owens’ product is extremely luxurious, however it doesn’t keep on with the confines of stereotypical and mass-peddled opulence. Blistered leathers, unique skins, tape-thin cashmere knits, overwashed denim, and a little bit of roughened glamour, akin to with injections of sequins or foils, have all performed a task in defining his singular design vernacular. His shapes and silhouettes are outsized, clingy, languid, and, frankly, charming. It all congeals to kind one thing futuristic and deeply primal in tandem. Neanderthal to alien, and but unusually well-suited for the fashionable period.
“What I always try to do is bring auteurship to my work,” he says. “The fact is, all of my life, I’ve tried to present something that is an alternative to a very strict aesthetic that we see in this world. We are expected to adhere to it, but I try to blur the lines. And not in a militant way, but in a way that’s saying, ‘I propose this as an alternative to the standards you are used to.’ I think with confidence and a certain amount of flair and boldness, we have established our own kind of beauty. A smarter beauty.”
Owens’ balanced strategy – that vogue can thrive as a tug-o-war between gloom and pleasure – can also be mirrored in his observe file of each controversy and actually sensible strokes.
Regarding the previous, in June, 2015, a mannequin strolling in an Owens’ present held up an indication that learn “Please Kill Angela Merkel Not.” There was some hypothesis as as to if it was an inside job, a violent stunt to drum up publicity (Owens denies any prior information of it).
With the latter, there are two standouts specifically. One dates to September, 2013, when Owens employed step groups from American sororities as a substitute of conventional fashions to current his Spring-Summer 2014 assortment. The present was a sensation, and, it’s price noting, it occurred years earlier than the style business’s system-wide push for better racial range and dimension inclusivity.
The different includes one other runway present, this time in 2019. Owens has a historical past of presenting on the Palais de Tokyo, and the massive dimension of the placement commonly calls for artistic space-filling.
That summer season, there was an on-site exhibition of labor by the artist and sculptor Thomas Houseago. One such piece was put in smack in the midst of Owens’ set. The designer extrapolated off of the concept, and imported clay from Houseago’s Los Angeles studio, mixing it with Parisian mud, and together with it as a part of the staging. Most importantly, it didn’t go to waste: “It’s clay that came from Los Angeles that was in a Rick Owens show that ended up at the Louvre, being used by students in their own creativity,” says Owens. “And I just loved that. I thought that was a great solution to [the excesses of runway shows.]”
Spring-Summer 2022, titled ‘Fogachine’, featured an array of Owens signatures; standout seems included a dip-dyed elongated sheer high over a barely-there physique swimsuit and splint-like python boots, in addition to a billowing, nearly caftan-like, tulle gown embroidered with iridescent raven feathers. Overall, the gathering reverberated with confidence and a kind of elegant-yet-menacing vitality; it was a charged-up homecoming, of kinds, however Owens doesn’t assign too many particular feelings to his work.
Plus, as at all times, he wrestles with the larger questions: “[With shows coming back after the pandemic], everybody is going to want to flex. Everyone is going to want to show that they are stronger than ever, that they’re more powerful than ever. It’s a little horrifying, but I get it. So that’s where my head is right now. I’m thinking, nobody wants to see humility. Nobody wants to see a humble lesson. People want to see that we’re back to full power.” Then, smiling mischievously, he concludes: “People want to imagine that everything’s going to be fine, and that we’ve got it all under control.”
Top picture: Rick Owens at his Menswear Fall/Winter 2020-2021 present at Paris Fashion Week in 2020.