Though he is now regarded as one of the fashion industry’s most prolific collaborators — with partnerships with brands including Moncler, Adidas, Converse and Birkenstock under his belt — teaming with other brands didn’t always come naturally to Rick Owens. In fact, before he took the plunge, it was an endeavour that he viewed with “deep scorn”, he chuckles over a Zoom call from Paris, where he’s sat in an airy room in the concrete-walled townhouse he calls home.
Mercifully for all of us, his attitude shifted when he realised that — while they may often serve as marketing gimmicks — their capacity for introducing the previously unknown to vast new audiences is not to be baulked at; a decision that has since established Rick as the jokingly self-styled “king of collaborations”.
The products born of his collaborative relationship with Moncler are particular standouts, fusing his dark, directional design sensibility with the Italian luxury brand’s iconic down puffers. A previous iteration of the link-up saw Rick and Michèle Lamy, his wife, Founding Partner and Managing Director Art/Furniture of Owenscorp, take to the road in a custom-designed Rick Owens + Moncler tour bus, and reimagine iconic Rick Owens pieces and silhouettes — think column-like cocooning coats and wide-set shorts — in Moncler’s nylon duvet. For the latest chapter of their collaboration, released as one of seven co-branded pieces released to toast the house’s 70th anniversary, Rick has interpreted one of Moncler’s most symbolic pieces: the Maya jacket.
The coat — shot here on Michèle by British photographer Platon – is a relatively subtle intervention by Rick into the world of Moncler, but it’s no less impactful for it. Featuring “architecturally quilted shoulders that I introduced in my men’s AW21 collection called Gethsemane,” he explains, along with gauntlet-like sleeve details, it exemplifies the idiosyncratic, architectural and unabashedly camp design sensibility that has made Rick one of fashion’s most influential forces.
Here, to commemorate the jacket’s launch, Rick discusses its design process, rallying against banal “airport aesthetics”, collaborations as “gossip”, and the responsibility he feels to keep pushing social norms.
Do you remember the first time that you saw someone wearing a Moncler jacket or experienced one in the flesh?
Well, I think the first time must have been in Italy, I don’t remember it happening in the States. But even in the States, that kind of jacket still held a lot of alert for me. I grew in the San Joaquin Valley in California, which was very drab. But when I went to high school there was this special bus that had to go up to Camp Nelson, which was up in the mountains nearby. It would pick up the kids that lived up there and bring them down to our school, and they were these supernatural, beautiful, fit, long-haired kids that wore down jackets because they were skiing all the time. They were kind of like these mythological creatures — so beautiful and otherworldly. And so puffer jackets have always had this kind of allure for me. They’ve always symbolised this kind of pot-smoking, skiing, elevated hippie ethos that was cool, unperturbable and otherworldly. When I came to Europe and saw people in their Moncler jackets, that was my immediate personal association.
“Sometimes, I may go too far, or I might be too extreme, but that’s okay! Judgmental moralism gets super extreme, too.”
How did collaborating with Moncler first came about?
I’ve always had puffer jackets in my collections, but aligning myself with Moncler was something I actually resisted for a while. In fact, there were years when I would never do collaborations. They’re actually fairly new for me. I was so independent and isolated, in a way, from the regular fashion industry, that I wasn’t really sure what my identity was in the fashion world. I felt like I didn’t want to muddy my identity by collaborating — I felt like I needed to first establish what I stood for and what I did, and I didn’t want it to dilute it. I also just had extreme scepticism regarding any kind of collabs. They often just seem like publicity stunts, and can even feel a bit desperate. That was a world I just wasn’t into, a world of hyperbole. But a few years after that, I realised that I had established an identity, and I’d reached a new comfort level with my production and with the way I presented my runway shows — I started playing a bit more. My first runway shows used to be very serious and very straightforward, but I then gradually loosened up and started doing looser, more extreme things. I became less threatened by the idea of having my identity perceived differently through collaborations, and I then started pursuing them avidly! I finally felt ready to come out of my corner and play a little bit. I was ready to participate in the world, to meet new people and engage in new systems. I was ready to participate, and participating in the world is a very validating experience — you’ve engaged, you’ve listened and you’ve been listened to. So I thought that collaborating would offer me the chance to push along my little ethos, which consists of suggesting different forms of beauty that bend what I perceive as very narrow, classical, rigid standards of contemporary beauty. Or what I like to call “airport aesthetics”.
Why’s that?
Well, because when you’re in an airport, you are herded through all these perfume displays that promote a very specific set of values. A specific, rigid set of ambitions and ideas around sexuality, physical beauty, personal appearance, body type. It’s ultimately a little bit cruel — not everybody can be on a yacht in Capri with washboard abs, about to have sex with somebody spectacular! I’m not saying that these are ideas that need to be eliminated, I just wanted to be somebody who provides other options. I try and do that with my shows, and with everything that we do. I try to present an otherworldly, queer world that I like to think helps to balance out judgmental moralism in the world. That may sometimes mean that I go too far, or I might be too extreme, but that’s OK! Judgmental moralism gets super extreme, too. If I want to do fistfucking videos and things like that, I think it brings a bit of cheerful degeneracy that counterbalances extremely moralising narratives and that’s a good thing.
What prompted that shift?
In deciding to align with somebody like Moncler, I’m drawn to a sense of adventure. Their sense of grandness is different from other houses, it is a bit more based on actual creativity and giving licence to designers to really explore things. The way that Remo [Ruffini, Moncler’s CEO] has courted and pursued a certain standard and level of designer is really admirable. There’s a little bit of a clash in a way, which I like, but at this point in my life, I really like to seize opportunities to express my ethos to different audiences. The ethos of being open to variations of aesthetics that go beyond the standard ones that we’re forced to look at. Through working with Moncler, I get introduced to a new audience, who perhaps doesn’t know me very well. It allows me to talk to more people.
What has the process of working with them been like over the course of your collaborative history with them?
They’ve always been so enthusiastic in allowing me to do what I want to. No idea is too outlandish. This collaboration on the Maya 70 is a pretty simple one, though — it’s not, like, a collection. But what I think that people get from this is going, ‘Oh, well, that’s a weird mix! Rick Owens isn’t really the kind of guy who does this sort of thing’, and that encourages people to think of both of us a little differently. For a brand like Moncler, it shows that they aren’t resting on their laurels, and they’re able to extend a certain amount of respect to a designer like me, that wouldn’t normally be associated with them. What we’ve done with this particular jacket isn’t anything incredibly intense. I’ve added architectural lines of mine. It’s the product of my looking towards Italian rationalist architecture — architects like Luigi Moretti, who I’ve always been a big fan of, and Gio Ponti, of course — but it’s really just a very gentle, subtle intervention. If I got really extreme with this, I’d probably be written off as being too niche, but if I’m able to subtly infiltrate contemporary culture with what I do, then those ideas can be accepted. Being too provocative and challenging is a little bit more aggressive than I want to be in my life. I want to challenge, but in kind of a cheerful way. Then again, what I consider cheerful, a lot of times people consider aggressive!
“I like to think that collaborations are about unity, and seeing disparate personalities grasp hands. The cynic in me, however, just thinks they’re gossip.”
For sure, there’s a real subtlety to this, even compared to your previous Moncler collaborations, like what you did with the tour bus as a case in point.
They didn’t blink an eye at that. And that was about Michèle and I going on a road trip in our own personal aesthetic bubble. We were going to Area 51 in Nevada, and to Michael Heizer’s secret art installation — it was kind of a great project. The bus was beautiful, and the collection was beautiful, and it really was about creating a special little world. That was a great project.
We’ve already discussed how you personally overcame your hesitancy to engage in collaborations…
…And my deep scorn for them! And here, I am — the collab king! [laughs]
On a broader note, though, what do you think the insatiable appetite for them says about the current state of affairs in fashion? Why do you think they resonate so well today?
I’m not really sure… I like to think that it’s about unity, and seeing disparate personalities grasp hands. The cynic in me, however, just thinks it’s gossip — we all like to see who’s hooking up with who. But I’m not putting gossip down. I love gossip! And are collaborations stunts? Yeah! But at the point where I am now in my life, they’re stunts that are a lot of fun. They shake up my personal rhythm, bring me into contact with new people and make me engage in a way that I didn’t before.
Credits
All images courtesy Moncler