30 facts you probably didn't know about Rick Owens

I have mixed feelings about Rick Owens. Over the years he has established himself not only as a designer but also as an enigmatic figure in the fashion world, known for his distinctive blend of avant garde aesthetics, bold personality, and unconventional spirit. He has redefined the very idea of beauty within the fashion system, constantly playing with brutalist and grotesque elements both on and off the runway. When I heard him a few months ago in a session with Bella Freud talking about the body dysmorphia he experienced as a child, which later led to his tendency to design clothing that distorts or exaggerates human anatomy while keeping it sculptural and rebellious, I understood his impulses much better. For him it has always been about promoting openness, an out of the box mindset, inclusion, and tolerance that does not recognize categories or limits.

Although success is often associated with youth, Rick Owens was in his forties when fame came knocking. Since his debut at New York Fashion Week in the early 2000s, he has continued to develop his unmistakable talent for tailoring, draping, and creating wearable yet never dull clothing, sneakers, and accessories, presented through runway shows that often functioned as provocative performances. Over the years he has received numerous prestigious fashion awards, including the Perry Ellis Award for Emerging Talent in 2002, the Cooper Hewitt Design Award for Fashion Design, the Fashion Group International Rule Breaker Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017. His retrospective exhibition Rick Owens: Temple of Love is on view in Paris until January 4, featuring more than one hundred striking silhouettes, archival documents, and artworks that guide visitors into his singular and provocative world, one that has always been as raw as it is poetic.

From his origins, to his meeting with Michèle Lamy, to the figures that inspire his work, we look back at the most fascinating facts about Rick Owens on the occasion of his sixty fourth birthday.

Rick Owens i Michèle Lamy, Phil Oh

1. Rick Owens’s full name is Richard Saturnino Owens, and he was born on November 18, 1961.

2. He grew up in Porterville, California. His mother, Concepción (Connie), was a teacher and seamstress, and his father, John, was a social worker with a large library, which sparked Rick’s deep love for reading.

3. Rick Owens was not allowed to watch television at home until he turned sixteen. Instead, the house was filled with classical music like Wagner, and the shelves were lined with works by Proust, Huysmans, Confucius, Aristotle, and Pierre Loti.

4. As a child he attended a local Catholic school, but he never felt comfortable there. He once said, “It was hard, very hard. I mean, the other kids were cruel, like animals.”

5. His first job after completing a pattern making course at Los Angeles Trade Technical College was at a company that made illegal copies or knock off versions of designer clothing.

6. Rick Owens met his wife and creative collaborator Michèle Lamy in Los Angeles in the nineties, when he began working as a tailor for her sportswear brand Lamy. At the time she also ran several extremely popular restaurants and clubs, Café des Artistes and Les Deux Cafés, frequented by celebrities such as Madonna.

7. Rick Owens admitted that during that period he went out constantly and drank heavily, to the point where the next day he would not know where he had left his car or even where he had been. He ended that lifestyle once he realized he felt as if he were dying.

8. Michèle was the one who first took him to the gym and motivated him to improve his quality of life and completely transform his body. Today he trains every day, which explains his lean, muscular physique.

9. He founded his brand in 1994, selling his pieces to one of the most forward thinking boutiques in Los Angeles, Charles Gallay, and attracting fans such as Courtney Love.

10. His work then caught the attention of Anna Wintour, who was so impressed that she arranged for Vogue to sponsor his first New York Fashion Week show for spring and summer 2002.

11. In 2004 Rick and Michèle bought and moved into a spectacular five story house from the eighteenth century in the seventh arrondissement of Paris.

12. Rick Owens never eats fast food. His diet is very healthy. He has a green smoothie for breakfast, and fish, vegetables, and avocado for lunch, all prepared by a chef.

13. Rick and Michèle appeared in a NSFW music video for the song Butt Muscle by the artist Christeene in 2017. The video featured a lot of lubricant, simulated golden showers, fake fisting, exposed crotches, and plenty of intense kissing, which caused strong reactions.

14. They also work together on a striking, luxurious Rick Owens furniture line made of concrete, bronze, foam, leather, marble, alabaster, and plywood.

15. Rick Owens is not only a fashion and furniture designer. He is also a writer and editor who has published several books over the past two decades, including L’ai Je Bien Descendu? (2007), Rick Owens (2011), and Rick Owens Furniture (2017).

16. He prefers to wear his own pieces and travels with multiple identical black items so he does not have to think about what to wear. He sleeps only in his comfortable black boxer shorts, also of his own design.

17. Rick Owens stores contain clear homages to the artist and designer Allen Jones. Poses of submission are transformed into hyper naturalistic sculptures that support tables, armchairs, and seats in the fitting rooms. This element pays tribute to Jones’s provocative art of the nineteen seventies.

18. He has said that Michèle is “a hypnotic sphinx. I am fascinated by someone who operates purely on instinct and emotion, while I am pragmatic, reasonable, and compared to her a little boring and conservative.”

19. Fetishes are an integral part of his collections, and speculation about his sexual practices and identity only adds to the mystique and extremity that surround him. Bondage motifs with straps often appear on the runway, as do fetish and pissing references, even in exhibitions.

20. He has a clear vision of old age. He would like to “end up in a garden surrounded by a wall, where he reads and plays with kittens.”

21. His natural hair is curly and gray, but thanks to chemical straightening and Japanese dye he maintains his signature long black hairstyle.

22. His favorite film directors are Satyajit Ray, Cecil B. DeMille, and Ken Russell.

23. Every afternoon he takes a forty five minute nap to restore his energy.

24. For more than thirty years he has referenced Joris Karl Huysmans’s novel À Rebours, which he identified with as a boy in Porterville. Today it serves as a guiding theme for his exhibition in Paris. “It gave me permission to be isolated, solitary, moody, to indulge completely in my senses.”

25. The exhibition is accompanied by a book of the same name, Temple of Love, which he wrote with fashion historian Alexandre Samson, documenting everything from his strict Catholic upbringing in a small California town to the present day.

26. He despises fashion’s constant hunger for novelty and has criticized Karl Lagerfeld. Lagerfeld “would consume, discard, consume, discard everything that is wrong in our world,” Owens said. The Chanel creative director “promoted gluttonous consumption.” Owens much prefers to “enjoy nostalgia because that is when you learn. Instead of always wanting new things like a child.”

27. He admitted that he does not worry too much about what other designers are doing. He prefers to look at his past work and find ways to develop or refine it with every new collection. He also supports colleagues he respects. He recently said that when he walks through Paris he likes to stop by The Row store.

28. Although he has lived in Paris for more than twenty years and calls it his home, he only began learning French in his sixties.

29. Among his famous fans are Kanye West, Michelle Obama, A$AP Rocky, Taylor Swift, Halle Berry, Liam Payne, Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bieber, Janet Jackson, Cheryl Cole, and Jaden Smith.

30. He admits that he constantly questions the present and how much more he still has to do. “Everything I have done has been a protest against judgment and condemnation. People judge each other so harshly and maliciously,” he says. “There have always been forces that support and promote diversity. That is where I can direct all my energy, to promote diversity. That is my purpose. And in the way I see the world now, supporting that energy is essential. So I have a lot of work to do. I am not tired.”