Rick Owens, Fashions Patriarch of Freaks The New York Times

Table Of Content

• FOURTH FLOOR
• WATCH: Inside a locally designed Afro-modern apartment
• Five Levels of Rick Owens: Inside the Couturier’s Paris Townhouse
• Glenn Adamson’s Favorite Objects and Things
• Rick Owens, Fashion’s Patriarch of Freaks
• House by IGArchitects: Architectural efficiency in a small space
• GLORIA KISCH: Remembering The Late Artist’s Functional Steel Sculpture

Make your way up the colossal concrete stairwell, and there are geometric marble chairs puzzled between silver racks filled with leather jackets, funnel-neck dresses, and asymmetrical tanks. It’s the perfect convergence of fashion and furniture, with everything single-handedly crafted by Owens. And while he’s best known for constructing imaginative gothwear, Owens’s creativity also expands into just-as-inventive furniture design. AD caught up with the designer at his Manhattan flagship to discuss his interior influences, location-specific design, and the development of his “anti-cozy” crusade.

FOURTH FLOOR

That was the closest I ever got to “Double Negative.” I sense a lot of testosterone and ego. There was something a little bit more sincere about it to me, something about becoming one with your environment in such a primal, primitive, huge, grand, explosive way. I feel that every time I go swimming in a sea or an ocean, I feel like I’m having intercourse with the world, which makes me feel insignificant in the best way. I identify with the sense of expressive bombast. But I feel that what I’m doing is a very gentle proposal to reconsider good taste or the standards of conventional beauty, which can be very, very rigid. To populate this utopia, Owens established a cast of collaborators which he sees as embodying a new way of living – ‘creatives who live their aesthetic defiantly and completely’.

WATCH: Inside a locally designed Afro-modern apartment

And also, I'm sure that I'm absorbing some information like, "This is happening a lot. Let's not go in that direction," that kind of thing or things to avoid. There are elements of conspicuous consumption that I'm seeing that are like, "Wow, things really to avoid." Because we're living in barbaric times, and we need to make barbaric statements. I'm just reflecting the frustration that I sense in the world. After I was handed a coffee, Lamy gave me a quick tour of the art, pointing out where—for safety’s sake—they had affixed champagne corks to the sharp ends of a spiky sculpture hanging from the ceiling.

Five Levels of Rick Owens: Inside the Couturier’s Paris Townhouse

One of the most intriguing collections in Owens' house are Onagadori Rooster feathers. "I've always dreamed of collecting these feathers," he says. These Japanese chickens were originally bred in the 17th century, and their feathers are particularly beautiful and unusually long. "They remind me that anything is possible," says Owens. Clearly, technical specifications are not what interests Owens in his furniture line.

Yet he holds a fascination for the manufacturing process. Across the landing from his office is a narrow space stretching from light well to garden in which benches are covered with resin blocks, unfinished plywood, metal rods, paint cans. True, but what’s interesting is that for all its immensity and rawness, it still feels extremely insular.The front rooms act as a kind of filter zone. And then at the back there are these huge trees, then the patio which is enclosed and gives on to the garden of the Ministry of Defense. Like Los Angeles, strangely enough, it’s a quiet little oasis, a blind space.

Rick Owens Held a Fashion Show In His Own House

And when you can blur the standards of beauty, you can open up minds to think of other things, too. So maybe this apartment, inspired in large part by Le Corbusier’s beach house Cabanon, is less fortress than it is a frame for Owens. Maybe the austere, all-marble-everything structure does help to keep out the noise and the distractions, but it also makes for a canvas on which to drape a beautifully lived life. Rick Owens' home is not only a place to live, but also a place of creation and inspiration. His love of reduction and minimalism, paired with the extravagance and drama of his aesthetic, make this room something unique.

"I use them as a 'memento mori' to remind myself that everything is impermanent," says Owens. A collection of pistols reminds him of his father, who had a difficult relationship with him. "They are a loving reminder of him now," says Owens. Owenscorp Bar is a communal space across from Owens' factory building. This is where Owens' team members and the community can eat and drink. "It's a place where you can relax and have something to eat or drink," says Owens.

House by IGArchitects: Architectural efficiency in a small space

Formerly the headquarters of the French Socialist party, he calls it his ‘concrete palace’ and ‘working compound’, where he began selling his collections over two decades ago. Inside, the largely concrete space is populated by sparse, brutalist furnishings reminiscent of the designer’s oeuvre. Other rooms contain the building's historic cornices and mouldings (albeit stripped back to their essence). This morning, guests filtered through these various rooms, taking places on furniture erected around their edges, winter sunlight streaming through the windows and skylights. The manse is where he and his wife, the artist Michèle Lamy, began selling their clothes 25 years ago. It soon became the brand’s full-scale headquarters.

Bringing It on Home With Rick Owens and Loewe - The Business of Fashion

Bringing It on Home With Rick Owens and Loewe.

Posted: Sat, 02 Mar 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

GLORIA KISCH: Remembering The Late Artist’s Functional Steel Sculpture

Aren’t you concerned about the neighbors’ prying eyes? Well, there’s no light at night, so what can they see? Besides, once you’re on the bed you’re effectively shielded from anything behind you.

Owens told me he was feeling guilty that many of his most hardcore devotees couldn’t be invited this season, owing to space restrictions. “I MIGHT HAVE TO RETHINK THIS,” read the always-awesome collection notes. He had opened his home for the show, he said, in deference to the “barbaric times” we live in, times where it didn’t feel right to hold one of his typical festival-like gatherings.

It’s almost biblical, heartbreaking, this man trying to get close to his son and the son making it harder and harder. After I sent him the pictures, we were in Booksoup in L.A. And I heard my dad asking the sales guy, “Excuse me, do you have anything on water sports?

On the right are two administration offices, where Owens’s assistant (light well-side) and accountants (garden-side) work at keeping the wheels turning. Rick looks in, directs me up to the next level. But you don’t have a mantelpiece.And this isn’t exactly your everyday portrait. The first-floor piano nobile is a neo-Baroque bonanza in which Owens’s Judd-meets-Mountie packing-crate and elk-horn chairs look right at home. Rick Owens photographed by Assaf Shoshan for PIN–UP. In the background a wax figure of the designer, modeled by Madam Tussaud’s.

An L-shaped lounge system is composed of low-lying arc-backed platforms covered in army blankets and surmounted by flat mattresses. A similar platform, flat this time, holds office in the centre of the room. I first met Rick Owens at his home and studio in West L.A. He’d lived there for years, originally behind one blacked-out shop front, then two, and by the time I visited in 2000, three. Across the road was the parking lot serving his partner Michele Lamy’s restaurant, Les Deux Cafés, where gleaming stretch limousines would depose their glamorous clientele.

Then, around forty minutes to showtime, Owens and I walked through the salon to the towering French doors overlooking the square and began to chat. Owens distanced himself from it and stressed that he and his company had not known anything about it in advance; he also banned Jera from his shows. Owens went on to call Jera his muse in several statements which he gave afterwards. Rick Owens typically produces a menswear and womenswear collection each season.

Owens' living space is an example of how to connect the past and the future. He shows objects from his homeware collection as well as relics from earlier interior work. "I love combining the past and the future," he says.