In the past year, few fashion designers have spoken to the moment as eloquently and honestly as Rick Owens. The Paris-based designer grew up in Porterville, in California’s San Joaquin Valley, in a household that prioritized books and reading over television, where memories of the pageantry and mystery of going to Catholic mass still impact his work. “That was my first taste of exoticism. All of these dragging robes, these gray dusty temples—it was exotic and glamorous, but also connected to morality,” he said to Clarissa M.