<text class="_textbox_1titd_17" direction="ltr" height="11.8829956054688" lengthadjust="spacingAndGlyphs" textlength="235.460159301758" x="68.8636016845703" y="-534.5" data-test="textbox">Almost 30 years after launching his </text><text class="_textbox_1titd_17" direction="ltr" height="11.8829956054688" lengthadjust="spacingAndGlyphs" textlength="109.191009521484" x="308.641387939453" y="-534.5" data-test="textbox">eponymous brand, </text><text class="_textbox_1titd_17" direction="ltr" height="11.8660278320312" lengthadjust="spacingAndGlyphs" textlength="36.63330078125" x="424.326416015625" y="-534.5" data-test="textbox">in his </text><text class="_textbox_1titd_17" direction="ltr" height="11.8829956054688" lengthadjust="spacingAndGlyphs" textlength="65.96337890625" x="465.192016601562" y="-534.5" data-test="textbox">latest book, </text><text class="_textbox_1titd_17" direction="ltr" height="11.8660278320312" lengthadjust="spacingAndGlyphs" textlength="156.493515014648" x="131.34700012207" y="-518.5" data-test="textbox">the designer dives back </text><text class="_textbox_1titd_17" direction="ltr" height="11.8660278320312" lengthadjust="spacingAndGlyphs" textlength="50.0548095703125" x="291.885894775391" y="-518.5" data-test="textbox">into his </text><text class="_textbox_1titd_17" direction="ltr" height="11.8829956054688" lengthadjust="spacingAndGlyphs" textlength="121.787994384766" x="346.121795654297" y="-518.5" data-test="textbox">decades-long history.</text>

In a follow-up to his first monograph, More Rick Owens (Rizzoli) chronicles the designer&rsquo;s more recent evolutions, beginning with his 1970s-inspired Fall/Winter 2019 collection, which paid tribute to fashion designer Larry Legaspi, who spearheaded the glam-rock style of the decade. From there, Owens&rsquo;s success has only continued to grow, as he has found new ways to provoke the fashion world while also tapping into today&rsquo;s youth culture. Interspersed with imagery from photographer Danielle Levitt, this physical looking glass into Owens&rsquo;s mind explores his perspective on visual media.
Ahead of the book&rsquo;s launch, Owens spoke with L&rsquo;OFFICIEL from the comfort of his Parisian apartment about his creative process and the legacy he&rsquo;s created over nearly three decades.

L&rsquo;OFFICIEL: While you are working on the book, did you notice any changes in your creative process since your early days as a designer?
RICK OWENS: I don&rsquo;t think so. Maybe in 10 years, I&rsquo;ll look back on it and I&rsquo;ll see some kind of pattern or a variation, but most of the time it&rsquo;s such a rolling-along process that every collection is an evolution of the one before it. So I don&rsquo;t really see dips and peaks; I&rsquo;m just at the front of the train. But I&rsquo;m not complaining about the pace of fashion at all, because I love it. I wouldn&rsquo;t want it any slower because it gives me a great sense of purpose and it keeps a rhythm in my life. Having deadlines, it&rsquo;s like birthdays and anniversaries&mdash;they mark time. The period in between each runway show is kind of like a puzzle, because I have a certain amount of resources and a certain amount of time and a certain budget, and I need to use those resources in the smartest way possible to make something compelling. If I had all the time in the world and all the money in the world, it would be hard to focus. So it&rsquo;s great to have those parameters and those boundaries to keep [me] in line.

L&rsquo;O: You said that every collection is an evolution of the one before it. How do you take a collection and write the next chapter?
RO: Well, if I knew the recipe, I would sell it and maybe make more money than I do now. Clothes themselves are such a strong form of communication. They&rsquo;re like the first method of communication when we confront somebody. Clothes and personal adornment have been used since the beginning of time to signify our connection to humanity or to signify power or status; to tell other people who we are or who we want to be.!en on top of that, there&rsquo;s my role, somebody who creates. Like a writer or an artist, you create as a means to communicate. So I&rsquo;m communicating about communicating, and communication is the purpose of life. That&rsquo;s what we all need the most. That&rsquo;s what we&rsquo;re here to do. We want to communicate with our loved ones; we want to communicate with other people. We want to be listened to by people around us, by our children. And that&rsquo;s what we want the most, until we die. I have been validated so much more than I ever fantasized. I feel like I&rsquo;ve been heard; I&rsquo;ve been listened to in such a huge, profound way. I&rsquo;m not really going anywhere with that. It was an observation.

L&rsquo;O: What are you trying to communicate with your work?
RO: I wanted to react against bigotry. We can see this online; we can see judgment, moralistic judgment, and superior judgment. I confronted that a lot in my life when I was young, and I always resented it so profoundly. Standards of beauty can be very rigid and they can be cruel because not that many people can reach those standards. So what I&rsquo;ve always wanted to do is propose an alternative: a world where there are other values that aren&rsquo;t so much about promoting clich&eacute;s or promoting envy and status symbols. The funny thing is that I kind of did such a good job at it that I created a thing that became a wall to a lot of people. A lot of people see the Rick Owens thing and they say, &ldquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s too much for me. I would never be allowed to enter that,&rdquo; when originally the intent was to create [the exact opposite]. I mean, that&rsquo;s just inevitable I guess. Every utopian urge usually ends up becoming corrupted somehow, and that&rsquo;s just the way that life works. But that was always my biggest urge, to celebrate the freak in all of us and to liberate that. When I was a kid, in my small town in California, there was a sale in the basement of the chief department store, and that was the first time I ever saw the cover of David Bowie&rsquo;s Diamond Dogs. And that was in the &lsquo;70s. I saw this cover, and it made me so nervous because it was pressing all of the buttons of everything that I&rsquo;d ever wanted. There was glamour, but it was kind of a sleazy glamour. There was homoeroticism and there was sexual ambiguity, and I was disturbed, deeply disturbed, but it was so liberating. And if I can do that to some kid in a small town, that would be a thrill. That&rsquo;s what I would love to do. I would love to liberate people from feeling that they need to conform to certain standards. So&nbsp;that has always been my drive and to do it in a convincing, compelling, sophisticated way.

"I would love to liberate people from feeling that they need to conform to certain standards."

L&rsquo;O: This idea of freedom and liberating people, it&rsquo;s something that you apply in fashion, but also in your other visual works like art or design. You&rsquo;ve created your own Rick Owens universe.
RO: Well, I haven&rsquo;t done perfume or makeup yet. 
L&rsquo;O: Would you like to?
RO: That would be nice to do. But that&rsquo;s a tricky world to enter because it has a lot of restrictions. And if you don&rsquo;t succeed the first time, it&rsquo;s very damaging. And there are so many other factors; you have to join powerful partners because it is so ruthlessly competitive. But it&rsquo;s not like a dream of mine to enter perfume and makeup because maybe [I just don&rsquo;t belong in] that world. And that&rsquo;s fine, because I have such a great life anyway. I don&rsquo;t really need to push myself into an arena where I don&rsquo;t belong, because my ideas wouldn&rsquo;t be as popular as they need to be to compete. [Beauty] is a different kind of competition than fashion. It&rsquo;s harder. It&rsquo;s way more narrow. I&rsquo;ve been thinking, I don&rsquo;t really like to travel that much, because the effort of traveling is usually more unpleasant than what it&rsquo;s worth to arrive. I live in Paris and Venice and they&rsquo;re so magical. I feel like I could spend the rest of my life just exploring them without having to spend a lot of time in airports. The thing about airports is that you are forced to go through those duty-free shops that assault you with a very specific kind of beauty standard, aspirational value system, and sexuality and body image. And I resent that. And this is all over the world. It&rsquo;s not the big brands that are forcing this on us&mdash;this is what consumers want. This is what the world wants. These are the standards that they&rsquo;ve all agreed on, and it&rsquo;s very rigid. It just reminds me that I just need to give people something else.

L&rsquo;O: You have a deep connection with Venice, even though it&rsquo;s not the obvious choice of residence for a designer. What is it about Venice that draws you in?
RO: Well, practicality. It&rsquo;s two hours away from the factory, and I ended up at the factory, not because I chose it, but because they chose me. When I was starting out, I was looking to license my collection, and I was traveling to different small factories that might accept doing a license with me. And this is the only one that accepted. I just grew up there. I ended up buying the factory once we&rsquo;d grown big enough. Venice was the closest magical spot, but it has always held so much allure for me. It is the most improbable, impractical city ever, which makes me love it, because it breaks all of the rules. There&rsquo;s an extravagance and a folly to it that I just love. Not only is it magical, it&rsquo;s actually an art hub. With the Biennale and the museums that had been set up there, it&rsquo;s an important place for contemporary art at the same time as being this completely impractical piece of cake. 
L&rsquo;O: What is your relationship with art?
RO: I&rsquo;m a fan. I&rsquo;m not a connoisseur, but it&rsquo;s the closest thing to spirituality that I know of from day to day. I live in Place de la Concorde in Paris. And so I can just walk through the Tuileries Garden to the Louvre and it can be part of my day. And I love that. I love having that access to a grand cathedral of art. When you go to the Louvre, it has everything: life, death, lust, corruption, war, blood, all of the art that was stolen from other people, and the lust of things that are portrayed that went on behind the scenes. It&rsquo;s just this carnal orgy. It&rsquo;s so sophisticated, but it&rsquo;s so primitive at the same time. It&rsquo;s a cathedral to life. So that&rsquo;s old art, but then there&rsquo;s contemporary art, which is new life and new urges and new ambitions and emotions. It&rsquo;s thrilling.

"We want to be listened to by people around us, by our children. And that&rsquo;s what we want the most, until we die."

L&rsquo;O: How do you approach an idea and transform it into a runway collection?
RO: I don&rsquo;t know how this expresses itself in a black skirt that you see on sale in a department store, but behind every collection, what I&rsquo;m thinking about is all of the anxieties and the elations and the tribulations that all of us are processing and going through. People talk about my clothes being dark. I think, How can you not acknowledge the real world? There are designers who are oblivious and who present total Disneyland escapism. And that&rsquo;s fine. If people want that, that&rsquo;s a totally valid choice. I don&rsquo;t invalidate it, but I prefer something that&rsquo;s a little bit more honest. When I talk about primal urges, those are honest urges that all of us share, and to take those into account when I am presenting or making things is the most honest processing that I can do. 
L&rsquo;O: Your work has often been called provocative by those within the fashion industry. Is that something that comes with instinct?
RO: I put out there what I want to see. I want to be shocked. I want to be surprised. I want to be provoked. I want to be stimulated. I want to see something that pushes things. That&rsquo;s what I want to see. So I just do stuff that I want to see.

L&rsquo;O: In previous collections, there have been references to Egypt, the &lsquo;70s, and other periods in history. How does the past inspire you?
RO: I live in the past for sure. I think it&rsquo;s because I like seeing what happens from point A to point B. For instance, I prefer dead artists because I like to see how they evolved from the beginning to the end. With new artists, I can&rsquo;t see the whole picture yet. And they might change. They might goin a weird direction or something. I can&rsquo;t really commit, but there are enough examples of old dead artists that have created a convincing monument, and those are the ones that I look to because I want to see how they did it. I read biographies of artists and creators because I&rsquo;m curious and probably reassured by how messy they were. I just like seeing how an aesthetic monument is made because that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;d like to do. 
L&rsquo;O: Looking back at your career, what do you consider your most challenging moment?
RO: I guess starting to do runway shows, because I&rsquo;d never really considered doing them. I had only ever sold to stores on my own. Coming from LA, I had never even been to a runway show. American Vogue reached out and offered to sponsor a show for me. That kind of endorsement was a huge thing, but I was a little concerned because I knew that my aesthetic was very soft and that it might not have enough impact for runways. The first runway would be nice, but if it didn&rsquo;t really change or evolve, I wouldn&rsquo;t be exciting enough for runway shows for very long. So that felt threatening, and that wasn&rsquo;t part of my personality, to be a performer. I hadn&rsquo;t ever really considered it. But anyway, I thought, Well, I have to do this. So I did it. At the beginning, I wasn&rsquo;t great. I had a lot to learn, and I could have really fucked it up. I could have gotten better or I could have gotten worse. Luckily, I got better. What was funny is that gradually, I started learning and understanding how to do it, and then I started having fun. Then, all of a sudden, I was doing these spectacles, and I really started enjoying it. It just took me a while to learn.

Unpacking Rick Owens' Storied History

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