Rick Owens Is Finding a Balance Between Control and Collapse

0:06This is The Run Through. I'm Nicole Phelps. Today I am joined by the one, the only Rick Owens. He joined us from his studio in Paris, and we talked about Temple of Love, his upcoming retrospective at the Pelé Galliera. We also talked about his first ever runway show and his advice for young designers. Here's my conversation with Rick Owens. Hi there. Hello. How are you? Can you hear me? Yes. Where am I reaching you? One World Trade Center in our new podcast studio. Where are you? Are you in Italy or are you in Paris? I'm at my office in Paris. Let's see. You can kind of see the studio. And it's a beautiful design.

0:55And if you see closely, the doves have just taken up residence in the nest right outside my window. How lovely. They're being very quiet right now, but she's there. Is it like a morning dove or the ones that sound like they're sad? No, you don't know. I don't know. But they are big and juicy. She's the healthy. Well, maybe she's just got eggs in her. It's big, juicy dust. Is the exhibition opening the night of the show because the show's in the morning now? We have an opening the night right after the show. I changed my show time to 730, which is later than I usually do. And then right after the show, the models walk off the runway because it's outside.

1:46They just walk off the runway, cross the street and walk through the garden to the opening. And we're all supposed to follow them. How great. It's going to be it's going to be a standing show, which I don't think I've ever done before. And I ordinarily wouldn't do. But I wanted there to be more capacity. and I wanted more people to be able to enter the show instead of be behind the barricades. And I also wanted to serve beer. I wanted it to be like a beer bust because it is, well, I won't tell you about the show, but I just wanted it to feel like a beer bust that starts in the harvest of the Palais de Tokyo and then moves across the street to the garden of the Palais Galliura Museum.

2:33in. So the opening of the exhibition will be immediately after the show, which I thought would be great fun. I wanted to start by talking about the title of the exhibition. It is called Temple of Love. And I wondered if you had anything to do with the title or it was the curator's decision, or you came up with it together. I asked for it. And the curator, Alexandre Sampson, He has been so generous. Well, everybody over there has, but I did a retrospective like 10 or 15 years ago in Milan. And I only did it then because they allowed me full control because I did not want to be interpreted by anybody.

3:17they allowed me full control and it was such an amazing experience. I was able to highlight all of my successes and quietly tuck away any of what I thought were flaws. And while I was doing it, I was just thinking, who gets the opportunity to do this? This is like writing your own obituary. You get to define how you want to be represented forever. And then I thought, well, wait a second, that's Instagram. Everybody can do that. That's what everybody does. But to do it in such a academically recognized or officially recognized way, well, that is, of course, incredibly special. And the show that I did then, it was very bombastic, which that's something I can do.

4:10or I tend to go there. And afterwards, I was thinking, you know, if I ever get the chance to do this kind of thing again, I think I would want to do something more quiet and more maybe delicate, more nuanced, that covered the earlier years and that was more, not so much about the Paris runway, but more about the construction and the way I had started out with clothes that were more of a tender show. I would want to do a gentle tender show. So anyway, when they approached me with this, when the Musee Galliera approached me, well, I was beyond flattered, but I also thought, you know, I had my chance, I had my control the first time.

4:58I'm kind of open to collaboration or to compromising. Also, because I respect what they do so much. I mean, the shows that they've had there are spectacular. And I had no qualms about submitting to what they wanted to do. And I thought, I've already satisfied my uncontrolled thing. Let them, let the tippy top of the tippy top, let them do what they want. Speaking of the tippy top of the tippy top, I understand that you are only the third living designer to get a retrospective at the Pele Galliera. The other designers being Azzedine Alaia, who has since passed, and Martin Margiela. So how do you feel being part of that company?

5:47Isn't that fancy? I think it makes perfect sense, but I wonder how it feels to you. Thank you. I think maybe I represent the kind of designer that is hard to find nowadays. days um a designer that has their own voice that is not part of a committee and i'm not criticizing anybody i i've always said that inspiration is 10 of any kind of success here and my inspiration is 10 but my partners my partners supply the 90 and that is the execution that is the factory that is managing this army that it takes to get the clothes out there get them get them out there the way that i hoped that they would be um the distribution getting getting stuff into a store on time for people to buy it i mean that is no easy feat the other thing that all that i think worked in our favor is the fact that i never really had a design studio it was just me going and working directly with the factory.

7:00Now, I have no experience with the design world. I just made everything up as I went along, so I don't know how it works. But from what I understand, a designer has a design studio. They create a collection, and then the collection needs to be taken to a factory for them to translate it to industrialized. We skipped that step. I went directly to the factory and fed the factory directly. I think that is what helped us. I think the fact that I communicated directly with the factory and we all cooked it up together and that what ended up in the stores was as close as possible to what I had thought up.

7:44I think that has always been our main strength. I understand that the exhibition encompasses a wide swath of your work, not just contemporary work, but going back to pieces that you even did when you were designing in Los Angeles. And back then you had a studio across the street from your partner, Michelle Lamy's restaurant, Les Deux Café. And I don't think I've ever had the chance to tell you that I went there as a young fashion assistant in the late 90s. And it was the coolest place I had been to up until that point in my life. And I think it's still it's still up there. Of course you did. It was the place to go.

8:27If you went to L.A., it was the place to go. It really was. We didn't have a lot of money then. I think people always assume that because she's older that Michelle comes for money and that that was what got us started. And she did kind of come for money, but she blew it all before me. So we had to start from zero. And we lived off of that restaurant. That's where, I mean, if we weren't eating there, that was our dining room. Michelle is one scrappy little creature, and she just kind of stapled that whole project together with just spit and vinegar. And I was doing the same thing with my thing.

9:17We were just kind of improvising. And yeah, that was a wonderful time. And everybody, everybody came through. Everybody. So we didn't need to go anywhere. They all came through at one point or another. And I remember a show you did at New York Fashion Week before you left for Paris for good. Was it around the 9-11 that that happened? Yeah, yeah. In my studio, I picked up the phone one day and there's a voice on the line going, hello, this is Andre Leontali. Am I speaking with Rick? I was like, hey, yeah. And I don't remember how he got my number, but he said, well, I'm not going to impersonate him, but he said, I saw your clothes in the windows at Henry Pendles and I think you need to meet Anna.

10:10so i go okay well i'll be in new york in a couple of weeks and um because at the time i had never really considered runway shows that that was a different business from my business and i'd never even been to a runway show that whole world was just there was just a different level and it was a different kind of world and i didn't disapprove of it it just it just was different uh alien because there was no fashion industry in Los Angeles per se then. I mean, I hadn't interned at Calvin Klein or Donna Karan. I hadn't seen how it worked. So anyway, so I went and met Anna, and I did what I always do.

10:59I packed all my clothes in an Army surplus duffel bag, and I had my assistant Daphne come with me who was also who would also model the clothes so we went to Anna's suite at the Ritz and I dumped out my duffel bag on the floor and I just picked up like the clothes and Daphne tried them on and it was very nice and and lovely and so then we left and so then I guess based on that meeting she decided to propose a runway show because they wanted to support young American designers after 9-11. I think 9-11 was the motivation for that. And I was a little bit torn because I thought, that isn't my world.

11:44I don't understand how to do clothes that would be exciting enough to sustain attention for a long enough period of time. I could risk burning out what I was doing. I could quietly survive for a while doing my quiet little thing, just selling it to my buyers out of my hotel rooms in New York and Paris. But I run the risk of burning out, of having that kind of spotlight on what I did was a risk. Then I thought, well, I'm 40. I was 40. I'll always wonder if I hadn't tried. So what the hell? So I did. And the first runway show was wonderful. I mean, but first runway shows always are. You're fresh, you're new.

12:36And I knew that. I knew that I know I could do a good first show. I mean, I know because it feels honest and pure and whatever. But when the fifth show ends up looking very similar to the first show, people are going to turn away and that is going to damage what I've done.

13:01We'll be back after a quick break.

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13:46I wanted to bring up that first show in 2001 or 2002 because, of course, the shows you put on now are so different. You were talking about sort of the everydayness of your collection at the time. And now you are, you know, I don't know if you're going to like this term, but you are a master of spectacle. You like a smoke machine. You like a rose petal confetti. I mean, we all like it. We all like it. We all have our cameras out from the beginning the show starts. I was afraid then that I wouldn't know how to do a show. I never really thought about it then. At the beginning, there were a few shows that were awkward.

14:29There were some shows where I tried too hard. I didn't really know completely what I was doing, and I wasn't convinced myself. Then, gradually, though, and this is where good partners come in, those collections they figured out stuff that they could sell they found the the few things that they could sell and they created a business out of it they allowed me to develop who gets that anymore very few people that that is crazy that they allowed me to develop gradually i i learned and I started relaxing and then I started playing and I found I became I wouldn't say confident that sounds a little bit cocky but I became more comfortable so that I could explore more and the things that I could explore were well the first thing is whenever when I first started I always swore that anything I put on a runway would be available to sell.

15:34I didn't like the idea that it was all spectacle and that women were put on heels and these dresses like floats. And then the designer came out at the end in jeans and a t-shirt as if to say, what I presented is a fantasy, but it's not real. I always felt whatever I put on the runway, I'm going to live it. it's all going to be real and it's going to be the truth it's going to be what i think is the truth um and what i'm really committed to and what i really believe in i was thinking okay instead of um the physicality of making people wear floats with high heels what is another way i can use physicality to my ends to further the values that i want to promote and how can i talk about beauty in a different way that isn't about lipstick or heels or breasts how can i talk about beautiful intentions or beautiful behavior uh that became my first thought whenever i when i started doing runway shows?

16:49How do I promote the values of wanting to create a haven for people who don't see themselves reflected in contemporary cultural standards of aesthetics? How can I make the confines of our aesthetics a little bit more flexible? How can I literally think outside the box a little bit. And if I can introduce a weirdness that is palatable enough and convincing enough, I can influence maybe the way people think. If you can accept clothing that's weird, but not too weird, because that is always the balance. I want to do weird because I want to see weird. I want to live weird. But I know that if you go too far, it just becomes a wonderful fantasy that nobody can relate to or nobody can imagine themselves embracing.

17:47And it's not that I'm calculatingly careful about it. I'm practical. You know, there's a level of weirdness that I'm not going to go beyond. And luckily, my limits seem to work. Do you think it is the weirdness that creates the devotion? I think one thing we always remark on when we're at your shows are the people who come in head-to-toe Rick Owens, and they look like they could be from another planet with the big boots, and they're these giants in these incredible outfits. What do you think causes this devotion, creates this devotion? Well, I've given them a world, I guess, where they can get away with that and where they can celebrate that i'm celebrating um weirdness and that and that liberates them i had that when i was young and i've talked about this a lot but when i was in porterville in a very conservative town i remember seeing in the sales bin in the basement of kmar david bowie's diamond dogs album cover and um there was this grotesque glamour that shocked me and it disturbed me because it exposed I felt exposed.

19:02It exposed something in me. Part of it was my suppressed shame because my flamboyance, I'd had to suppress my flamboyance, but to see it celebrated here, it just, you know, it made me blush. It made me turn red that somebody had seen me register and respond to this album cover in this basement in my little town. It unnerved me. But that was so liberating. It was such a release. And it showed me that there was a place I could go. It was a haven. I think I've always thought if I could do that for somebody, that would be a life well-lived. Is that one of the albums that's in the exhibition? I think there are some album covers.

19:52Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is. Is that something you worked out with the curator? You said, I want to put these... Yeah, his direction was, we needed to collect ephemera. And so I proposed things that I'd already shown, but then added on to it because it had been 10, 15 years since the last time I showed things. But there's going to be a lot of similarities because I don't change. I don't throw things away. I don't throw ideas away. I don't throw first loves away. That was another thing that disturbed me. designers who kind of embrace this whole aesthetic and then reject it to turn to something completely new i don't yeah it disturbs me it there is a voraciousness a voracious consumption in that that that disturbs me and i wanted to be the opposite of that i wanted to be consistent i wanted to be loyal i wanted to be faithful

21:03more with Rick Owens after the break

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21:56I wonder, working with Alexandra Sampson, what you have uncovered or discovered about yourself? Oh. How does he see you differently than you see yourself, if at all? I'm not sure yet. And maybe in these days I'll find out because he is very discreet and very elegant and has kind of left me to my own devices. And we, I mean, we've collaborated on everything, but he's very, he might be manipulating me. I'm not really sure. We'll find out later. But he's been very gentle in his suggestions. But now I'm starting, I am starting to get kind of an idea because right this minute, we are reviewing all of the texts.

22:50everything is coming together and there's like all of the texts the descriptions of each look and the wall legend of the legends on the wall and and he's writing all of them so only now am i kind of getting an idea of his perception of me and what he wants to highlight or what he thinks is worth highlighting and it's it's funny it's it's uh i'm sure it's going to be very illuminating. But the other thing is, it was his idea to include this statue of me pissing that I had done for PT Imagine like 20 years ago. I'm so glad you brought this up. I was a little afraid to bring this up. And at that time, I was doing this statue anyway for the house.

23:40And the idea was, it was just kind of my uh portrait over the mantel place moment you know i just got this house and i thought you know when a man reaches a certain level of success or security he commissions a portrait to go to be the the master of the house over the mantel place so i thought i'm gonna do that but it's gonna be a wax figure and it's gonna be pissing um pissing has been a motif for a long time my first uh big profile in Europe in ID Magazine I gave them a portrait of myself a self-portrait of two there's two of me and I'm pissing into my mouth and it was partly because um partly to acknowledge my like sex club past because I you know I thought I'm presenting myself as this married guy and you know it i need to kind of explain i don't want there to be any any idea that i'm trying to cover up my past or something so um but it was also i've always used it it's always pissing has been kind of a little poke mocking propriety because propriety becomes um condemning judgment a lot of times.

25:09And that has always been there and it will always be there. It is a force in the world. There is good and evil and there always will be. But I feel like there's always been a balance and everything is about balance. My personal life, it's always been a balance between control and collapse. I've always been attracted to both extremes. And how do I find the right balance for me. And, you know, I've gone to both extremes. How has working on this exhibition shaped your thinking about your next collection? You're going to, as you said at the beginning of our talk, you are going to have a runway show and it's going to spill out into this opening night without giving too much away, of course.

25:55No, I don't know how, literally. And I never really know how i'm always kind of i i think i i've i'm lucky enough that i have this delusional i try not to overthink things too much and then afterwards i analyze the hell out of them and and i see oh you know i see the references i see and i pick them apart as much as any vicious queen would any collection i'm like doing the same thing to my collections like oh that's such a rip of this or so i don't know yet but it's going to be cohesive it's it's not going to be a shocking departure it's going to be enough movement i hope that will feel relevant but it will still be consistent with everything that i've done which is the most important part to me uh michelle always tells me um you only you only like dead artists and i go yeah because i want to see the full the full story i want to see that they maintained integrity and that they maintained their pureness from the beginning to the end i don't want somebody new who's fresh on the moment and exciting who's going to turn around and refute what they've done before i i want somebody who has really meant it and that's who i want to be anyway the name though temple of love i thought if i'm If there has to be a title, I want it to be something loving.

27:26Like, just say the word love, and that's a good thing. Just make other people say the word love, and that's a great thing. That's just good to do. Rick, we talked about your early days as a designer a bit, and on this show, on Vogue's podcast, we talk a lot about how hard it can be for young independent designers to break through and to keep a business. So for the young, striving designers out there, what words of advice do you have? Oh, God, I don't think I have any. This is such a different landscape from when I started. And when I started, I never thought, I'm as surprised as you are that I got this far.

28:07So I had never anticipated, this was never a goal. My goal was just to be a pure artist, a pure, struggling, starving artist. i was talking about charles james because he was living kind of in squalor in the in in the the chelsea hotel making beautiful exquisite things that he never delivered apparently and i am summarizing his his life terribly but i only wanted to have i only wanted to be an eccentric designer living doing exactly what i wanted in like a niche somewhere off hollywood boulevard so um it was just circumstance that that led me here but i mean that needs to be the goal the work itself needs to be the goal and you know i i say this to my partners which kind of makes them crazy that I was saying, I don't want to get bigger.

29:05I just want to get better. So I think that's all it got. Thank you. I can't wait. I can't wait to see the exhibition. Hopefully you'll reach out and I'll be able to give you a mini private tour. I would love that.

29:27That's it for the run through. See you Thursday.

29:43The Run-Through is produced by Chelsea Daniel, Alex DePalma, and Joanna Solitaroff. It's engineered by Jake Loomis and James Yost. It is mixed by Mike Kutchman. Stephanie Karaoke is our executive producer, and Chris Bannon is Condé Nast's head of Global Audio.

30:08From PRX.