Rick Owens

Richard Saturnino Owens was born in Porterville, California in 1961, dropped out of Otis Art Institute, and spent the 1990s pattern-cutting in Los Angeles' garment district while his then-partner (now wife and lifelong creative collaborator) Michèle Lamy ran a restaurant on La Brea. His clothes — drape-heavy, monochromatic, treated leather, sliced cashmere knits — circulated underground until Anna Wintour invited him to show in New York in 2002. He moved to Paris a year later, set up house and studio in a former Socialist Party headquarters near Place du Palais Bourbon, and never looked back. The Owens vocabulary by now is iconic and unmistakable: elongated silhouettes, fly-strap leather boots, draped wraparound jackets, that resinous dust-grey colour palette he half-jokingly calls 'goth gas station attendant glamour'. Beyond the main line he runs DRKSHDW (denim and casualwear), a couture-level furniture practice (in marble, bone, and bronze), and a fragrance line. His Paris fashion week shows — fire, smoke, performance art, his own kids cast as models — are among the only events on the calendar nobody calls a 'production'. For all the theatricality, Owens is one of the more disciplined operators in luxury: he and Lamy retain full ownership, produce in Italy, sell sparingly, and have built a multi-generational customer base that includes both club kids and museum collectors.