Rick Owens

California-born, Paris-based designer Rick Owens creates clothing that has been described as "glamour-meets-grunge.” He crafts sensuous and moodily beautiful garments and specializes in draped jersey dresses and leather jackets. In 2006, this avant-garde designer with a self-described “subversive eye” was hired by the venerated furrier, Revillon. A relatively staid producer of high quality fur garments, Revillon may have seemed an unlikely fit with Owens, one of the most cutting-edge designers in the world. Owens embraces an earthy, if somewhat soiled, color palette, a gothic and moody sensibility, and a very lean and narrow silhouette, sometimes counterbalanced with sculptural jackets and coats with sharply angled hemlines. Revillon, on the other hand, was a bastion of tradition and conservative sophistication.

Owens jolted the look of Revillon with his first collection, which he presented during the haute couture fall/winter 2006 season. The designer infused his garments with a slightly “deconstructed” aesthetic. Furs such as mink and fox were combined, in a slew of vests, with tightly fitted backs and standing collars that fell into ruffles in front. All the fur and fur-trimmed pieces were paired with his louche, edgy, intricately cut, jersey-wrapped tops and lean trousers. The collection was a critical success.

Owens was born in 1962 and raised in sunny Southern California. He studied fine arts at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles until a pattern-making class led him to drop out. After working for some local producers of inexpensive imitations of designer clothing, Owens launched his own label 1994 in Los Angeles. By the early part of the next decade, his work began to appear in Paris and American Vogue, and he showed his first runway collection in September, 2002, during New York Fashion Week. In 2003, after his second runway show in New York, Owens and his wife and muse, Michele Lamy, made the decision to move his studio from Los Angeles to Paris and show during the Paris collections.

Since the move, Owens has earned numerous awards, opened free-standing boutiques, and launched several lines of clothing and furniture.