Darkshadow - Rick Owens

 "I design clothes for someone who has experienced a lot and satisfied a lot of appetites, someone who's past experimenting, who's been there and done that.  It's very autobiographical.” - Rick Owens

Rick Owens is a true architect of style with his luxe leather jackets and oversized, draped jersey dresses and tops.  His clothes are elegant, dark and timeless,    He knows how to place a seam in just the right place, hanging fabrics on the bias so that the design clings or drapes from the body in a way that is flattering and dramatic.  

Rick Owens is an American-born designer but has lived and shown his collection in Paris since 2003.  Just recently, his brand celebrated it's 20th year in business, a huge milestone in an industry where design houses struggle to stay relevant season after season.  

What I admire the most about Rick Owens is his knowledge of pattern design.  After dropping out of Otis-Parsons in Los Angeles where he was majoring in fine art, he attended a trade school to learn pattern design.  Rick Owens credits the beauty of his clothing with his knowledge of pattern construction.  "You can’t convincingly get abstract until you really know the fundamentals. It’s the same thing with pattern-making. You can’t start distorting things unless you kind of know what you’re doing "

His fashion background reads out of one of those storybook tales, of where a designer starts from nothing and builds their brand into an empire. After finishing trade school, he worked as a copyist, replicating the designs of  well-known designers using cheap fabric and watering it down in which the mass-market could afford.  In 1994, he decided to leave his job in the knockoff industry and start his own line. He bought inexpensive remnants of fabric and converted them into his own fabrics through different processes of washing and dying.  From those remnants, he created beautiful t-shirts, dresses, and skirts that he started taking to the local boutiques in Los Angeles   He found a store that was willing to take his pieces for fifty percent up front.  From there he started to build his brand.  As he recalls "I never got an insurance policy, I never had employment benefits, I didn’t do taxes, I didn’t take out a loan. I had one sewer full time and then two sewers when it was more of a crunch. I was barely, barely surviving and we weren’t making that many clothes, but I had no overhead, so I was able to do it." 

He can make the most beautifully constructed jacket, with so many different  pattern pieces and then turn around and make a flowly, beautiful draped dress with only a few seams but yet is just as dramatic as his many paneled jackets. He knows how to perfectly balance a combination of hard and soft looks

What I love the most about Rick Owens clothing is the way the dress moves when you walk, the softness of the fabric on the body and the versatility of the garment.  I can easily throw on one of my simple black maxi dresses to run up to the store or add a bunch of chunky pieces of jewelry to dress it up for a night out.  These clothes are meant for the girl who doesn't follow trends, who wants to create her own unique style, who isn't about tight, short, skin-baring clothing and who loves to layer.