I thought this was a good article in WWD.
Rick Owens: Breaking the Rules
By MILES SOCHA
Fashion can be a powerful thing—transformative, transporting and unifying.
Consider what it did for Rick Owens, a native of Porterville, Calif., who described his younger, less-fashionable self as a “soft sissy” who wore husky-size pants.
Today, lounging on the leafy first-floor terrace of his bunkerlike Paris headquarters, Owens looks every inch the dark lord of glamorous Goth he has morphed into, from his sinewy, gym-hewn physique to his curtain of poker-straight raven hair.
He is cloaked top to toe in the blackest black, as if dipped in tar: an inky cashmere shawl draped over his muscular shoulders; his droopy, low-crotch shorts finished off with black knee socks and floppy, sneakerlike leather boots.
“With a little discipline, a little creativity and work, I changed into what I wanted to be. If I can do it, anyone can,” he says of his extreme makeover, then quickly displaying his polite-to-a-fault, nonjudgmental nature by adding: “Of course, if that’s not your priority, that’s fine, too. You know, fashion and style isn’t everything.”
On this unusually warm October morning, arias are leaking from the building’s open windows, and Owens is being quizzed about his spring 2014 women’s fashion show, a pulse-pounding, awe-inspiring spectacle starring American college step teams that attendees instantly recognized as a major fashion moment.
“A piece of fashion history,” declares Stephen Ayres, head of fashion at Liberty in London. “One we won’t forget,” agrees Tomoko Ogura, senior fashion director at Barneys New York, praising the “soul behind the show and the spirit behind the performance.”
Indeed, more than a mere catwalk parade, it was a visceral celebration of girl power, of team spirit and—ultimately—about the deep human need to belong.
Asked if he was sure he had orchestrated a hit, Owens says he feared the show could “come off as a stunt.”
In particular, he’d had trepidations about members of the four step teams—the Zetas, Washington Divas, Soul Steppers and Momentums—using “grit face” expressions, and was adamant that the dancers only scowl if they felt comfortable doing so.
“One of the most elegant things in the world is having a sense of humor about yourself,” says Owens, a man who plants nearly naked, sometimes severed wax figures of himself in some of his boutiques. “When I saw them using that grit, it was hilarious, it was fun, it was smart, and I thought, That’s the kind of spirit I love.”
Told his show was a success, Owens hands the crown to the dancers: “All I did really was dress them. Everything else was them.”
The high-energy parade of athletic-minded clothes climaxed with the teams linking arms one by one and exiting the runway like some giant, swaying, techno-loving caterpillar. More than a nifty finale, it was a veiled allusion to the human chains students would form as a show of solidarity during America’s race riots, and a way to move through them, according to Owens.
“That is such a great example of grace under pressure, and grace under pressure is another one of the most elegant things ever,” he enthuses. “I don’t mean to trivialize what it was, but we’re also kind of not forgetting what it was, and we’re also kind of honoring it for what it was.
“I think people [at the show] felt that spirit and were moved because it’s not just about race. It’s about belonging. Everybody has felt like they don’t belong, everybody has wanted to be part of something, but felt that they weren’t, so I think that’s a very primal thing that everybody there felt and everybody could relate to at that minute.”
Rick Owens: Breaking the Rules
By MILES SOCHA
Fashion can be a powerful thing—transformative, transporting and unifying.
Consider what it did for Rick Owens, a native of Porterville, Calif., who described his younger, less-fashionable self as a “soft sissy” who wore husky-size pants.
Today, lounging on the leafy first-floor terrace of his bunkerlike Paris headquarters, Owens looks every inch the dark lord of glamorous Goth he has morphed into, from his sinewy, gym-hewn physique to his curtain of poker-straight raven hair.
He is cloaked top to toe in the blackest black, as if dipped in tar: an inky cashmere shawl draped over his muscular shoulders; his droopy, low-crotch shorts finished off with black knee socks and floppy, sneakerlike leather boots.
“With a little discipline, a little creativity and work, I changed into what I wanted to be. If I can do it, anyone can,” he says of his extreme makeover, then quickly displaying his polite-to-a-fault, nonjudgmental nature by adding: “Of course, if that’s not your priority, that’s fine, too. You know, fashion and style isn’t everything.”
On this unusually warm October morning, arias are leaking from the building’s open windows, and Owens is being quizzed about his spring 2014 women’s fashion show, a pulse-pounding, awe-inspiring spectacle starring American college step teams that attendees instantly recognized as a major fashion moment.
“A piece of fashion history,” declares Stephen Ayres, head of fashion at Liberty in London. “One we won’t forget,” agrees Tomoko Ogura, senior fashion director at Barneys New York, praising the “soul behind the show and the spirit behind the performance.”
Indeed, more than a mere catwalk parade, it was a visceral celebration of girl power, of team spirit and—ultimately—about the deep human need to belong.
Asked if he was sure he had orchestrated a hit, Owens says he feared the show could “come off as a stunt.”
In particular, he’d had trepidations about members of the four step teams—the Zetas, Washington Divas, Soul Steppers and Momentums—using “grit face” expressions, and was adamant that the dancers only scowl if they felt comfortable doing so.
“One of the most elegant things in the world is having a sense of humor about yourself,” says Owens, a man who plants nearly naked, sometimes severed wax figures of himself in some of his boutiques. “When I saw them using that grit, it was hilarious, it was fun, it was smart, and I thought, That’s the kind of spirit I love.”
Told his show was a success, Owens hands the crown to the dancers: “All I did really was dress them. Everything else was them.”
The high-energy parade of athletic-minded clothes climaxed with the teams linking arms one by one and exiting the runway like some giant, swaying, techno-loving caterpillar. More than a nifty finale, it was a veiled allusion to the human chains students would form as a show of solidarity during America’s race riots, and a way to move through them, according to Owens.
“That is such a great example of grace under pressure, and grace under pressure is another one of the most elegant things ever,” he enthuses. “I don’t mean to trivialize what it was, but we’re also kind of not forgetting what it was, and we’re also kind of honoring it for what it was.
“I think people [at the show] felt that spirit and were moved because it’s not just about race. It’s about belonging. Everybody has felt like they don’t belong, everybody has wanted to be part of something, but felt that they weren’t, so I think that’s a very primal thing that everybody there felt and everybody could relate to at that minute.”
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