Rick Owens (born November 18, 1962) is a slender Californian with long black hair and sharp features. He resembles a medieval magician, and his image has an infernal tint.
“I try to make clothes the way Lou Reed makes music, with minimal chord changes… I try to give everything I create a slightly worn, distressed look.” The style forged by Rick Owens is loved by many, including Kate Moss, Madonna, Rihanna, as well as the grand dames of modern style Carine Roitfeld and Lara Stone.
Plug table, bronze, plywood. 2015.
Rick Owens Show, S/S17.
Rick Owens can shock the seasoned Parisian elite. Two years ago, at one of the shows, he dressed models in the bodies of other models. But such escapades only enhance the effect that his collections produce.
Rick Owens, S/S16.
Rick Owens is a native of Northern California, with some Apache blood in his veins. He studied painting at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. He also took sewing courses at the College of Commerce and Technology in Los Angeles. Since 1994, he has owned his own design label, Rick Owens. It is believed that an important milestone in the designer’s career was the appearance of Kate Moss, dressed in his black jacket, on the cover of French Vogue.
Model Kate Moss wearing a Rick Owens jacket.
The designer has lived and worked in Paris for the past thirteen years. Here, his original vision and special sense of materials have been polished under the influence of European culture, but the “black” minimalist style was formed in the United States.
A couch upholstered in velvet with a sable fur blanket. Rick Owens.
A table with copper upholstery. Rick Owens.
Rick Owens is a big fan of modern cinema, especially the black-and-white films made in Hollywood in the 1930s. Tragedy, sensuality and pre-war values feed his imagination, and the visual drama of light and dark that old American films are full of is the basis of his own aesthetic. Rick Owens makes clothes that are fluid, asymmetrical and mobile. The same models can be reproduced many times with minor changes.
A bed of Rick Owens’s own design in his Paris apartment. Pine plywood covered with cashmere cloth.
But working with furniture is done in a different way. Owens designs furniture for the long term: so that the items can be passed down from generation to generation. The designer believes that tables and chairs should have character, they are part of our everyday life, they fill the space of the house with rhythm and allusions. The same approach was taken by Paul Poiret, Jeanne Lanvin, Rei Kawakubo, and fashion designers who, for various reasons, turned to interior items. Rick Owens began designing furniture under the patronage of Parisian gallery owner Philippe Jousse, Jousse Entreprise. Today his furniture is represented and produced by Carpenters Workshop Gallery.
Rick Owens anticipates the era of “new barbarism”. In collaboration with the gallery, he created the Prehistoric collection, which includes objects made of petrified wood and stone with the remains of plants 500,000 years old, marble and alabaster. The surface of some things is complemented by chips and spectacular scratches in the spirit of modern urban vandals.
Couch, alabaster, bronze, stained plywood, Rick Owens. 2010.
Bed , alabaster, bronze, Rick Owens. 2010.
Chair, plywood, mink fur, Rick Owens. 2009.
Chair, plywood, deer antlers, Rick Owens. 2009.
“Ten years ago, Han and I (as Rick Owens calls his wife Michelle Lamy. —ed.) moved to Paris, I occasionally made custom furniture, including the one I once designed for our bunker on Hollywood Boulevard. I was inspired by the simple lumber pieces of Robert Mallet-Stevens and Claude Parent. But once we settled in the city, Han began to look around and find artisans. I made some from black plywood, Han found people who “translated” these forms into petrified wood. Our LA army blanket bed was transformed into an alabaster mold in Paris, and the pressed lumber chair was carved from soft white marble. All in all, this furniture became a personal exercise in creating our own little world.”
Curial chair, petrified wood, Rick Owens. 2011.
Prong Bench, black marble, Rick Owens. 2012.
Half box chair, alabaster, Rick Owens. 2011.
Screen, black plywood, Rick Owens. 2011.
Benchdent bench, ox bone, Rick Owens. 2015.
Wall Ogive Lamp, bronze, Rick Owens. 2013.
Rick Owens designs original objects by rethinking archetypes. For example, the backless curule chair in his opus Curila Chair or the trident in the Trident Chair, the Roman camp bed, the Louis XVI style la boudeuse couch. He chooses exquisite, rare materials, only natural materials and is ready to endlessly develop the palette of black and the palette of white in order to remain within the limits of his signature monochrome in furniture. He needs either petrified wood aged five hundred thousand years, or translucent marble and alabaster. Rick Owens manages to create images no less expressive when designing furniture than at his fashion shows.
