RICK OWENS | 2019

VOGUE GREECE _ issue November 2019
RICK OWENS interview FILEP MOTWARY

FM: My favorite moment from your past collections was when you had those long feather coats

RO: Those were my Marlene Dietrich coats! That was my Marlene moment.

FM: I mean I saw them backstage and then I rushed to the front-row to see them on the runway … Every show is beyond, everytime its just that you once said that “a fashion show is a ceremony where guests walk out carrying what they saw as relics in their memory” and that was exactly that!
And I think it was also one of your most fragile, romantic moments on the catwalk. It was a moment that was not only emotional but feminine too, because usually your women look like warriors instead of fragile creatures.

RO: It’s partly about putting on a show though. I mean. When you are going to do a show, I want something that has power and so that automatically becomes warrior-like I suppose. But that one was successful in getting a more feminine-fragile point of view across, I remember that.

FM: You have been living in Paris since 2003? What led decide moving to France?

RO: Just technically, I started manufacturing in Italy and it made sense to be showing in Paris and it didn’t make sense to be doing all of that from Los Angeles. I needed to spend a lot of time at the factory because I was learning how to execute things, execute my clothes and produce them. In getting the expression that I wanted meant, I had to really saturate myself at the factory. I had to really just move in so that I could adjust to the new flow, and get the results that I wanted. Because 95% of this job is execution. The 5% is inspiration… I repeat myself a lot.. You know whenever I do these interviews… I am a little reluctant to do interviews that much because I don’t have that much to say, I mean, I’m pretty focused and there aren’t a lot of variables in how I get things done and what I do. So I end up repeating myself and one of the main things is the 95% execution …
There is a lot of talented people with good ideas in the world, there’s a lot! There’s a lot of beautiful ideas but if you can’t get them executed the way you want to, it’s not gonna work. And, getting them executed with all the people that it takes to get that done, that’s a very delicate, a fragile thing; it’s a very fragile formula and sometimes it just doesn’t gel.
So sometimes no matter how good the ideas or inspirations, it just doesn’t come together, and it takes people with a lot of talent, it takes…
I have partners who I’ve had for the past 18 years who are incredibly talented at getting things executed, getting things delivered, getting things done on time. Just the logistics of getting a collection into a store and to people’s hands, thats a huge endeavor I am not doing it by myself and they have allowed me…and we see what happens with creative directors in houses having three years to prove themselves and then being rejected, or even less and you know if they don’t get it right in that amount of time they are replaced.
If I wasn’t able to have people to protect my vision and execute things the way I wanted to, that would have happened to me. So to be able to be independent and have that protection and support I am under no illusion that it was my talent that let me last this long.
It’s just the fact that I have a force around me that protected me and then carried my ball to the goal, so..

FM: Is it hard to build a team that you trust?

RO: I have no idea. I’ve never tried it any other way.

FM: How do you choose your people to begin with?

RO: Serendipity. Thats why its so compelling, that’s why a designer can become so compelling. You can’t force that kind of formula, its magic! And it’s like a good marriage, you know, there is no guarantee. If it works, you’re bewitched by the magic because its just unusual and rare, so…

FM: And how do you see this decision of moving to Paris 16 years later. Aesthetically it was a much different time when you started showing your collections, in comparison with what other designers where presenting. It was like the 90s when the Belgians “invaded” Paris and a decade before that when the Japanese arrived.

RO: I felt like I was reluctantly accepted and I was tolerated. It’s not an aesthetic that I invented of course and its an aesthetic that has been around before the Japanese designers, its an eternal aesthetic that’s always been a niche and that was fine with me. I wanted to be niche, I wanted to be considered esoteric… that as a quote will be…hopefully that isn’t pulled and recorded‘cause that’s an embarrassing quote, an elitist arrogant quote, but I wanted to be a marginalized weirdo, that’s totally what I wanted to be.
I’ve long ago probably had to give up. I am certainly not as rare as I was aiming for; I have become a little bit more establishment probably now. But you know, there are compensations for that.

FM: Speaking of aesthetics, what was the inspiration behind your FW19 collection? You spoke about Larry LeGaspi for whom very little was known until very recently..

RO: There was flamboyance and a kind of an innocent joy. This is from my perspective from what I saw to that kind of aesthetic, it was a time of liberation and of anticipation of how things could be, when we look at it from now. There was resistance and there were people refining that resistance in expressing themselves and there was a sense of anticipation. I wonder sometimes if I see the zeitgeist now, I kinda roll my eyes at an attitude of entitlement and I am not gonna blame the internet because I think the internet is the most powerful luxurious thing that our generation has experienced. Having knowledge, that amount of knowledge in our fingertips, we’ve never lived in a more luxurious time.
But, on the other hand, all of the voices on the internet, all of the negative voices, competitively negative voices and all of the things that everybody is aware of now and are the attitude that we deserve the best, that we deserve it all and here is the best and we deserve it, that’s an unfortunate bi-product of the internet because we are not entitled to anything, we are not entitled to comfort, we are not entitled to happiness; we are lucky for whatever we get.
Is that just a grumpy old man talking?

So I was thinking of this period of entitlement and I was looking back to that period of anticipation. That was very romantic, it was kind of melancholic but there was a positive joyfulness to it that I kind of… I don’t know if I missed that, I don’t know if I really experienced it, maybe I just wanted to fetishize it. And that’s what that was about.

FM: Was it risky it was to be so openly inspired by him? What was so fascinating about him? I know you loved his work during your teenage years.

RO: Was it, I don’t know. My motivation is to take risks. The riskier the better, that’s what’s fun about it. To move forward you need to be bold and you have to take risks and you have to take leaps and there has to be an element of risk, that’s what I am looking for, that’s what I want to see, when I am looking at creative expressions from other people. I want to see risk, I want to see leaps, but I don’t even know if there was a leap, that aesthetic was, I think, authentic.
It wasn’t a stunt, it was completely authentically what I believe and what I want to see and that’s kind of a tricky exercise sometimes because I’ve been around for a while and I am doing stuff and I have a certain amount of people with me that – I suppose – I am kind of responsible for. So with responsibility you kind of think about “what I should do next”. I have to kind of click my mind into this space of who cares, what do I want to do next, what do I want to see, what do I want, what do I want to feel.
Its shamelessly selfish and egocentric but that’s sometimes who I have to force myself to be.
I don’t know if I am really forcing myself but I think that’s where I can really provide something that is of interest.

FM: It seems like our past inevitably influences us, even if we don’t realize it at the time. The eveningwear was very impressive, sensual, elongating the silhouettes. There I saw another one of your inspirations, American designer Charles James, whom you often refer to. I am not sure I can recall any designer that is so open in sharing his inspirations…

RO: Its honest, I think you know there… Maybe people don’t say it overtly but we can see references to other designers, to past designers in people’s collections.
I think it’s kind of ballsy to be that specific maybe, but the trick I think, I mean I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it unless I twisted it to express it in my own translation. Yes, I feel comfortable about that, that’s why I feel comfortable to say that reference, because I feel like I altered it enough to make that valid.
The Charles James thing is not only the aesthetic because the aesthetic is so far from me.
It’s about overly constructed things and architectural things of over construction and is about distorting the body in (pauses) ahmmm that’s not true, because I distort the body plenty…

FM: What do we have this need to distort the body through fashion?

RO: Well the reason that I do is because you want to go someplace further, you want to take up space in a different way. You want to invade the space around you in exaggerated way because exaggeration is fun, is play. Exaggerating in your clothes, exaggerating your own image is like a gila monster lizard, flaring their neck-ruffles to look imposing the other gila monster.
It’s just primal instinct; it’s something that we do.

FM: So the body serves as a platform for experimentation, transformation, and expression…

RO: … and becoming bigger than what you really are. Yeah, transformation. That’s what clothes are about, and communication. You are demanding attention in a different way. Demanding attention can be aggressive or a form of play and I think I’m probably incorporating both when I do my stuff.

FM: What about the makeup for this collection?

Oh yeah… I was thinking of glamour, I was remembering…
Make Up is about glamour and this is contemporary glamour. Body modification and altering the body…A lot of that make up was very classical, it was classical!
The things that we do to alter the eyes for the past 100 years they were all there, they were all the familiar tropes kind of manipulated in a different way that was fresh.

FM: Why do we have this need for change?
RO: Seduction… Seduction is one of the most primal, powerful forces around us, 24hours a day.

FM: Also, some of the models appeared somehow genderless..

RO: The question could be how on earth that could be about seduction, but there were classical elements to the makeup that was beautiful and then twists that were grotesque. One element of seduction is indifference. When you are flamboyant in an indifferent way, that kind of indifference is seductive, just the attitude of almost rejecting classical beauty and doing the opposite almost, hence a feeling of seduction. If you consider, Marlene Dietrich in her pantsuits, I mean at the time, that was considered end-high seduction that would be the opposite thing a woman should do to appear seductive. But that indifference and that rejection of conventional sexuality was ultra seductive, just the fact that someone would negate using the familiar tools to seduce somebody rejecting that completely: that’s thrilling and that makes you look at the person in a different… they have a different sense of power.

FM: Should men and women dress more like each other or not?

RO: I don’t know. I think they kind of do, I mean tight clothes for young people, tight jeans and t-shirt, what could be more alike than that. And what are all the kids wearing, I mean that’s what they are wearing; they are wearing tight things that point to their crotches and tight things that stretch across their chests, male or female, they are doing everything they are supposed to and it looks pretty similar to me.

FM: Why you always baptize your collections. Apart from Larry that is homage. What makes you choose a title for a collection: inspiration or practicality?

RO: It’s completely inspiration, also its whatever mood I am in and it gives me a direction for myself too. It’s almost like a game, this is what I’m…how do I go in this direction and how do I follow through with this theme? It’s just a little guard line for myself and it allows me to formulate my ideas with a certain kind of box. It’s not like I adhere to it completely, it’s supposed to be loose and it’s about poetry. Making compositions of clothes that have some kind of narrative, you are creating a poem.
And so the name is the beginning of that exercise for me.

FM: Do you start from that?

RO: I do! I usually start from that and I think about music for the show.

FM: There’s a song that always reminds me of you.

RO: What is it?

FM: Its by Theodorakis, it’s the opening scene score from Electra, with Irene Papas, directed by Cacoyannis…Please correct me if I am wrong, but being at your shows for a decade now, I feel that each time you are sharing out a personal statement through a ceremonial experience. Indeed each show is a unique situation and ideally it gets as close as possible to the audience. It is important to keep your audience entertained?

RO: Oh, no, I do them for me. I think what would I want to go see? And that’s what I really do. But I am conscious, like when you present something you want to delight and maybe shock, titillate – titillation is great, I love that – but I think of the word delight a lot. Like, I want to be delighted and delighting composes beauty and a little bit of a challenge, I think, and a little bit of shock. That’s what I am looking for and that’s what I want to provide. So I’m thinking of myself as the audience and I want to have fun, I want to take the position I have been allowed to take and have fun with it.

FM: How much time does it take to direct the event of the show?

RO: Three to four months between each show, although sometimes it’s only a month.

FM: How much time before you know this will be the location of the show

RO: Pretty far in advance because you need to nail down pretty long in advance. Since you bring that up, that really does change the tenure of each show, the location is essential and so by taking the parvis of the Palais De Tokyo that obligated me to do a certain kind of show and they’ve been great, super theatrical shows.
It’s been wonderful. I did kind of question myself, I was thinking I’m allowing myself to turn into that guy, I am allowing myself to turn into Mr Showbiz show and it’s fun but now it’s going to become kind of expected and maybe a disappointment if the shows are not theatrical enough.
So I’ve been kind of ambivalent about committing to our contract for this season actually, for spring. And you know they said OK we need to renew our contract of the Palais De Tokyo and I m going “Oh you know what, let’s look for something else, let’s look for something weird like a weird supermarket, not a garage because that’s somehow predictable, but someplace perverted… “. But then after thinking about it I was thinking “I’m just chickening out”.
They are fun doing these shows and I think I can do it in a way… If I can do something that is grand, a grand gesture but not overly ponderous or not overly worked, because of course there are the Chanel shows that are a totally different story and they are all about dick size, it’s all about how big your dick is and about the money and the power and everything – which is seductive and great and more power to them – but how can I do something grand that is not about that and a little bit more responsible and not about projecting the mood of consumption that kind of disapprove a little bit, not disapprove it but I don’t want to endorse.
So it’s kind of a good puzzle, a good challenge and it’s a fun thing to figure out. And I feel like its working, I feel like I’m able to do grand gestures in a very simplified, minimal way that have power and hopefully aren’t consuming too much and aren’t encouraging a voracious consumption or an attitude of voracious consumption.

FM: Are you ever misunderstood as a designer?

RO: Probably not, everything, anything good and anything bad is probably all true and you know you put yourself out there and you make some kind of expression and it… The audience is allowed to interpret it however they want. You know, for any criticism, yeah it’s usually kind of true. That’s Ok.

FM: And how do you balance commercial and interesting in a collection? Is it easy for you?

RO: Well I enjoy that element. For a runaway show, if there was no commercial risk it wouldn’t be as exciting or compelling. There is a gambling element that makes it fun and that makes people want to go. They want to see risk, they want to see a potential disaster and its very one sided but I enjoy a conversation. What I do is a conversation, what I do is participating with contemporary culture and I say something and they respond by buying my clothes. That’s a very crude way of putting it and it’s a very one-sided conversation but I don’t know if its a one sided conversation, they are talking too and I am listening.

FM: This is the thing, you are listening!

RO: I think so, I try and then I try not to but I mean there’s a part of me that does.

FM: How sensitive are you to criticism?

RO: Well, I mean I want my clothes to sell, I want to survive and I want to survive enough to keep making my expressions and keep on playing with the world and to keep on having this conversation. That’s what we all want! We all want to be participants in the generation that we are in.

FM: How easy it is to challenge your clients each season? Because you have a tendency to repeat yourself, at least how it appears when looking at it by far.

RO: I want repetition; I want to see as a creator have a point of view see it through the end. The other night, actually the night of my show, that evening we went to go see Isabelle Huppert in that Robert Wilson show. Did you go?

FM: I saw a show in Greece years ago…

RO: I didn’t even speak French, I mean it was two hours with her on stage by herself just speaking French and I barely understood anything, but Robert Wilson’s scenography and choreography and her emotions were enough. I was just flabbergasted it was the most… such a thrill. And that is an example of an artist that shows us the same thing over and over and over again with just a few new tricks and makes it work. And it’s like Dan Flavin sculptures or Donald Judd installations…and you know I was watching… People were getting up and leaving and I’m like” this totally doesn’t work for everybody, you can see that this is not everybody’s cup of tea to sit and watch this kind of non movement”, but, for a lot of people, for the subset is the exact right thing. It is very specific taste, it is saying something with confidence, and commitment and I love that. That’s what I am looking for and that’s who I want to be. And especially now, there is so much to choose from.
Somehow I was able to create some kind of a position in the fashion world and people decided to tolerate that pace. There are people who love it and there’s people who tolerate it. I mean that’s kind of great that I was able to get that little balance, kind of… You know it might not last forever. There might be just one day when all of a sudden it’s just completely not relevant anymore and we’ve seen that happen and its chilling. I’ve seen it happen, well we all have. Something happens, the world changes and suddenly somebody’s expression just no longer is relevant.
Thats life, that’s life and that’s death. I mean that’s the way things go.

FM: Yes, it’s a fact that the world is hanging from a thread right now…

RO: Is it, I am not sure. I think we flatter ourselves that we have been, that we had so much of an impact to the world. That sounds really blythe and dumb but when I see the way this generation responds to their Instagram feed and absorb so much information, more information than we were trained to absorb in one second, when we were young – I am older than you so I’m not including you – you can just see evolution happening, you can just see how the physical around maybe is just fading away, maybe it’s no longer …maybe now it will be just about ideas flowing down the ether and that’s OK. Everything is destined to come to an end.

FM: Can fashion be revolutionary today? Can it really manifest messages?

RO: I don’t think so because there are too many voices now. There will always be the ones that win the attention or catch the eye, but the eye has changed a little bit with so many options and you think of like contemporary fashion, it looks like the bottom of a 16-year-old girl’s closet.
Vintage spangles. I know that sounds critical, I am not sure…it’s not my personal taste but it’s a curious thing to watch and it’s just fashion and aesthetics going to a direction that we didn’t expect and thats whats supposed to happen. It’s supposed to be change and its supposed to reject the aesthetics of the generations before; it’s supposed to challenge those conventions. So I am watching it happen and I am trying not to be critical, I am not excited and I am not stimulated by it, but you know it’s just change.
Things change.

FM: You were recently awarded with the menswear designer of the year award by The Council of Fashion Designers of America. What does it mean for you to receive such recognition, how do you translate it after so many years of work?

RO: Thank you! It’s interesting politics. Being recognized by the CFDA, you know I got this “Lifetime Achievement Award” like two years ago or something, that was very much a surprise because I don’t have a relationship with that world and its not that I rejected it, I just never really engaged because it’s kind of a different system than mine. So to be recognized by them.. You know I’ve been accused of being disingenuous by saying this, but it really was a surprise because that kind of thing takes a certain amount of cultivation and for me to be completely absent from it and then to be recognized is a big surprise; but I have been doing this for 20 years and I have more visibility now than I did 20 years ago, obviously but I can see when somebody in my position…My reputation might be enhanced by the mood, the prevailing mood of designers bouncing around so much and being so easily replaced. Somebody like me that has just stuck to my guns forever and remained independent is going to stand out in this kind of climate, so I get it. I look at it like, you know we look at fashion like 50 years ago, 30 years ago and we see who is remembered and who made an impact. I am thinking about 50 years from now that is kind of what is remembered in the firmament of that fashion moment. And to be part of that, to be remembered as a significant part of that, that’s very moving. I mean we all …
Everything that we do everyday is about being heard. We want to be heard by somebody and it doesn’t have to be the world, you just want your kids to understand you and accept your advice, little things like that.
So to be able to look back and feel heard, that’s a huge fulfilling validating experience. So I am not going to look down my nose, you know like Oh, I don’t care- you know, it’s the tacky fashion world, what do I care? No it’s a huge thing to be recognized as being significant in what you do during your lifetime. It’s a very moving thing.
Ι have to admit though, the Menswear Designer Award though this year, I got a “New Designer Award” 20 years ago or something and then I get the l“Lifetime Achievement Award” two years ago and it’s like a beautiful full circle with nothing in between, which is totally fine. I mean I didn’t participate, I don’t expect to be recognized but I mean to be recognized for a lifetime achievement… and lifetime achievement implies the end, it just does …

FM: But does it though.. There’s a theory for example about designers being asked to participate in fashion exhibitions 20 years ago, they would deny as to them it was a signal that their career was over..

RO: I am not saying it the end at all but there’s an implication that if you die tomorrow you left behind a good body of work and you will be remembered for this. To be able to control your own narrative, everybody wants that, everybody wants to be able to be remembered the way they want to be remembered, so that’s a blessing.

FM: Can we talk about your mother; she is always present at your shows. Does she understand what you do? Is she aware of her son’s success and how does she react?

RO: I am not really sure. I am the only one so I am her baby and probably the world revolves around me for her. She has probably a very romanticized view of my heroism. It’s great to have your mom be proud of you, who doesn’t want that?