Rick Owens grew up in Porterville, a town of 55,000 in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Drawn to pre-gentrified Hollywood, he moved to L.A.’s punk underground in the 1980s. He studied painting at what is now Otis College of Art and Design, then switched to Los Angeles Trade Technical College to learn pattern-making and draping.
In 1994, he launched his eponymous line, working out of a raw storefront on Hollywood Boulevard. His “glunge” aesthetic (glamour meets grunge) quickly caught the attention of stylists like Arianne Phillips and Panos Yiapanis, as well as Anna Wintour and Carine Roitfeld, who featured his work in Vogue. In 2002, he won the CFDA’s Perry Ellis Award, and in 2003 he moved to Paris, establishing his home and atelier in a historic building that once housed French President François Mitterrand.
His collections, shown in Paris, include the main womenswear and menswear lines along with RickOwensLilies, DRKSHDW, and HunRickOwens. The first flagship boutique opened in Paris’ Palais Royal in 2006, followed by stores in London, Milan, New York, Tokyo, and other cities.
In 2007, his wife Michèle Lamy began producing the furniture he designed, which is regularly exhibited at international design fairs and in galleries in Paris, London, and New York.
“The clothes I make are my autobiography: the calm elegance I want to reach and the damage I’ve done along the way, an expression of tenderness and raging ego, an adolescent idealization and its inevitable defeat.”
