Rick Owens
Fashion Design - 1981
The Paris-based American fashion designer Rick Owens (‘81) enjoys prominence in the
international fashion world. His edgy, rough-hewn designs are sometimes described
as “glunge” [glamour + grunge], and are worn by the likes of Courtney Love, Madonna
and Helena Bonham Carter. Owens sells tens of millions of dollars’ worth of clothes
each year, in 250+ high-end fashion stores around the world. ...
“Think of Rick Owens as the Ben Franklin of fashion,” writes Fashion Wire Daily Paris,
“an American in Paris, a novel inventor, a rabid iconoclast, and an individualist
blessed, or blemished, with the whiff of the sexually perverse. Admired at home in
the United States, both were hailed in Paris — Franklin for his sharp wit and fertile
mind, Owens for his unique vision and successful resuscitation of nearly moribund
fur label Revillon. Though they arrived as celebrities in Paris, touted as influential
players in the métier of choice, they both came from modest backgrounds — Benjamin
from Massachusetts and Rick from Porterville, California.”
After Otis, Owens did knock-offs in L.A. before cutting patterns at a sportswear
company owned by his now-wife Michele Lamy. He started selling his designs at Charles
Gallay, and a few years later had negotiated a contract with Maxfield; by 1999, his
line was a top seller at Barneys. In 2001, he signed a distribution deal with an Italian
agency, and an Annie Leibovitz spread in Vogue further propelled his career. In 2002,
he won the Council of Fashion Designers of America Perry Ellis Emerging Talent Award.
Owens began his longstanding collaboration with stylist, Panos Yiapanis, and showed
his first runway collection in New York in 2002. Since 2003, he has worked out of
Paris where he doubly serves as creative director for the furrier Revillon. Some of
his pieces were used to create the look for Emily Blunt’s character in the 2006 film
The Devil Wears Prada. Owens was awarded a Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award, and
his second store in New York's Tribeca district opened in 2008.
“With each new favorable notice,” writes The New Yorker, “Owens seems more determined
to prove his independence from the fashion establishment. He doesn’t worry that his
provocativeness will alienate customers or critics. [And though] he gives few interviews,
doesn’t employ a publicist, and has never advertised his line, his diffidence seems
to only enhance his cachet among fashion editors and insiders.”
“I have a simple long silhouette that I started out with,” says Owens in Image Gallery,
“and still sell those same pieces the most since day one of my business. These are
my foundations. But each season allows me to experiment with some new proportions
to refresh my foundation.
“My look is about an appreciation of teenage angst without actually having the angst,”
he has been known to say, and compares his style to a Brancusi sculpture: “(Just)
a slab of metal on a hunk of wood, but it's about the right piece of metal, the right
hunk of wood and the perfect gesture.”
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