Rick Owens: A Sharp Edge

Fashion designer Rick Owens’ fashion label displays an array of sharp shapes and various silhouettes. Owens is often credited with bringing goth fashion to the mainstream fashion world. His clothing and shoes look like they could be worn by rockers having a party in a basement or a leggy hipster chick walking through the streets of New York. He seems to have fondness neutrals like black, white and beige but he is able to use those colors without making bland clothing by incorporating textures like leather and knitted cotton. One of his strong points is his outerwear pieces that include an array of jackets ranging from a more traditional biker jacket to a sleeveless number with an asymmetrical collar.

In addition to clothing, he also designs furniture that makes IKEA funiture look like cheap Walmart patio furniture. His furniture is minimalist but it is still interesting. His penchant for textures, patterns and neutrals are also present in his furniture. He uses materials like marble, wood and animal antlers to create these artistic items like benches, chairs and tables.The pieces look like they belong in a museum rather than someone’s living room or a building’s lobby.
His work is edgy but it is wearable he isn’t looking to take over the fashion world and he isn’t big on advertising. He wants to retain some of his individuality and doesn’t care to touch the corporate world.
“Advertising pulls you more deeply into the fashion system than I’m willing to go. I have enough, and my business is growing at a pace that’s gradual enough to be safe, yet fast enough to be motivating,” he said to lifestyle blog Vice. “And advertising’s another job, like runway shows. Once you start, you need to be ready to do it forever. That being said, though, I never thought I’d be doing runway shows.”

Owens has been a bit of a rule bender for most of his life.  Owens is an only child  that was raised by a religious family that was so conservative that Owens wasn’t allowed to look at television until he was 16 years old. Like many sheltered kids, Owens rebelled and started to listen to rock music from artists like Alice Cooper and Iggy Pop.
According to Vogue, after graduating from high school, he moved to Los Angeles to attend Otis Art Institute of Parsons School for two years before dropping out. He worked for a batch of factories before he went to work for Michele Lamy, a business owner and his future wife. Lamy’s connections helped Owens gain exposure and in 1994, Owens began selling exclusively to eccentric boutique owner Charles Gallay. From what Owen says, the fashion scene in the nineties wasn’t ideal. He made it his mission to show people that edgy fashion can be wearable and incorporated into everyday life.

“When I started out, I resented the fact that dramatic or radical fashion was confined to the runway or to special occasions,” he said asked about his influence on fashion. “I wanted to corrupt conformity from within by translating extreme silhouettes into a gentle gray that could quietly be part of every day. I do see hints of that happening around, but find it hard to believe that it worked. I think it was going to happen anyway, but maybe I did help.”
His work with Gallay propelled his career and he started to get noticed by high-end department stores and he ended up getting an agent in 2001. His first collection, sponsored by Vogue, made its debut in 2002. Since that first collection, he has made a name for himself and collected awards along the way from organizations like Cooper-Hewitt, the National Design Museum and Fashion Group International. Not bad for a long-haired, high-heeled misfit from central California and he plans to keep being that misfit until his dying day. “As time passes, I want to become more and more Rick Owens,” he told Vogue in 2006.
–Ashleigh Atwell