Rick Owens on improvising during Covid-19, gender-bending style and how he learned to appreciate the brand collaboration – check his latest Drkstar Converse sneakers – interview
- The fashion designer rarely goes for celebrity endorsements, but A-listers like Rihanna, Adele and Timothée Chalamet sport his looks on the red carpet anyway
- He’s worked with Adidas, Dr. Martens and Birkenstocks and created sneakers for Converse, but used to think collaborations were ‘just a hype and money machine’
Sitting against a grey background splashed with hints of Art Nouveau decor, designer Rick Owens dialled in from his home in Concordia, Italy, where he has spent most of his time during Covid-19 lockdowns.
“It was a weird period, because we’ve all been with a global crisis, which made us think, very internally and introspectively,” he says. “Everybody has kind of been going through something so epic, which has made us all internalise and think about our most intimate relationships, our most satisfying relationships and things closer to home.”
The California-born and Paris-based designer, famous for his signature long dark hair, has held his past three seasons’ shows at Venezia di Lido, close to his Italian team and factory, rather than his usual Palais de Tokyo venue. “We needed to improvise a little bit on how we were moving forward in reaction to the coronavirus, the depravations and limitations,” says Owens.
Appropriately, the autumn/winter 2021 fashion show on the waterfront in Venice had a gloomy, foggy atmosphere that hinted at apocalypse. Both the men’s and women’s shows were titled Gethsemane, after the garden outside Jerusalem mentioned in the Bible’s verse Mark 14 as the scene of the agonies and arrest of Jesus.
The shows were held in January and March 2021 respectively, channelling the same noir aesthetics. Dressed largely monochromatically, in black, white or dark purple, the models were universally masked. Deconstructed silhouettes, exaggerated shoulders, puff jackets with ruptured sleeves and over-the-knee boots were juxtaposed, no matter how much they clashed.
