The godfather
of goth
He wears head-to-toe black, is 60
but still goes clubbing – and
everyone from Anna Wintour to Rihanna
adores him. Jane McFarland meets
fashion’s provocateur, Rick Owens
Getty ImagesRebel. Provocateur. Lord of Darkness. Freak. Rick
Owens has been described as many things in his 30-year
career as a fashion designer, but let me add “witty” to the
list. He’s regaling me with an account of his recent stay at a
London hotel. When he stepped outside with a guest, the
doorman asked if they needed a car. “I said to him, ‘No,
it’s OK, we are just going to sit over here and take some
heroin,’ ” says Owens in his languid Californian drawl.
“And the doorman replied, ‘I’ll fetch you a spoon, sir.’
I mean, isn’t that the cutest? So adorable.” Owens’s chis-
elled face remains deadpan but his eyes glitter.
Owens, 60 years old — and to clarify, 30 years sober
and drug-free — feels like one of fashion’s last
remaining legends. He’s the original purveyor of the
“glunge” (that’s grunge plus glamour) aesthetic, and his
cult-like status and legion of hardcore devotees — a
profile in The New Yorker magazine dubbed his female
fans “Elegant Monsters” — mean he is often regarded
as the original rebel. Owens has been name-checked by
ASAP Rocky in his music, he had Kanye West round for
dinner during fashion week, and Rihanna and Kim
Kardashian are fans. He and his wife and business
partner, Michèle Lamy, 77, with her gold teeth, tattoos
and ring-armoured fingers, happily operate outside the
realms of the polished fashion machine. Meaning, they
don’t mind upsetting the status quo. Personal expres-
sion is Owens’s raison d’être.
Born in Porterville, California, a small city north of Los
Angeles in the San Joaquin Valley, Owens moved to LA
after graduating from high school, originally studying
fine art, then dropping out after two years to study
pattern cutting at a trade college. His rebellious streak is
a symptom of a controlled childhood, he says. “I grew up
as a delicate, sensitive sissy in a very conservative town.
There was a moral attitude that was always judging me.
Everything I’ve done has been a reaction to that.” After a
stint working in knock-off houses — copying the work of
well-known designers — he landed a job at a Los Angeles
sportswear firm, owned by Lamy, who is also the owner
and hostess of Hollywood hotspot Les Deux Café. They
met, left their respective partners (Lamy was married
with a child; Owens, bisexual, had a boyfriend), moved in
together and later, in 2006, married.
When Owens launched his label in 1994, Courtney
Love was one of the first to adopt his rock’n’roll
wardrobe of machine-washed, tumbled-dried leather
jackets, ribbed tank tops and Creatch drop-crotch
trousers. Stars such as Helena Bonham Carter, Ange-
lina Jolie and the Olsen twins were pictured in his
clingy tees and draped asymmetrical dresses. After a
private audience with Anna Wintour, she insisted
Vogue sponsor his first catwalk show in 2002. A year
later Owens and Lamy moved to Paris, where they still
live and work in a five-storey mansion on the Place du
Palais-Bourbon, in the 7th arrondissement. (“I love
living in Paris but I don’t assimilate much,” Owens
says. “I don’t speak French and I never really need to —
I’m in a bubble.”)Owens at his
spring/summer
2022 show in
Paris last year28 • The Sunday Times Style