rick owens

Richard Saturnino Owens, better known as Rick Owens, has turned his darkly glamorous, post-apocalyptic take on gothic grunge into a globally-renowned fashion business, built largely around his signature leather jackets. In addition to his main line, Owens has a furniture line and a number of diffusion lines: Drkshdw, Rickowenslilies and Hunrickowens.

Having dropped out of Otis College of Art and Design, Owens took a course in pattern cutting at Los Angeles’s Trade Technical College. A scarcity of work led to Owens accepting a position cutting patterns for illegal copies of designer clothing. In 1994 he began his own label, selling exclusively to Charles Gallay, one of LA’s hippest and most directional retailers. In 2001 the designer sought international expansion and agreed a distribution deal with Eo Bocci Associati; as a consequence the designer’s production relocated to Italy.

Owens broke into the highest echelons of the industry after French Vogue ran an image of Kate Moss wearing one of his leather jackets. Owens was able to utilise the momentum, with assistance from Anna Wintour and American Vogue; the publication sponsored his first show at New York Fashion Week’s Spring/Summer 2002 season. He also began his longstanding collaboration with stylist Panos Yiapanis in 2001; to date Yiapanis has worked on every single one of Owens’s presentations.