Rick Owens' Design Process Isn't Like What You Might've Expected

Rick Owens speaks on his design process, his hatred for sketches and collages, and his wife Michele Lamy.

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Complex Original

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Rick Owens, one of the most interesting figures in fashion, doesn't follow the traditional way of designing garments. During his sit-down with The Talks, he revealed that he has never sketched one his designs. Instead, he likes to get straight to the technical aspects. 

"I just work from images of things on a mannequin and I’m looking at proportions and then I print them out and cut them up and re-proportion them and add lines," Owens told The Talks, adding that while sketches "are pretty" they're also "too unrealistic." In fact, he said he has never sketched anything because "there’s just something too cliché" about it. "I went to art school to be a painter, so I have this standard image that I think is the standard of art and I think a fashion sketch would be too superficial," he said. "And cheap. It just seems corny. It’s not a necessary step. It’s just like this fantasy. It’s like collages. I have this thing against making collages of inspirations and stuff."

He added: "Just get to the point! It’s just an unnecessary step that is not really true. It’s just superficial, it’s not technical. It’s just kind of masturbation. It’s just jacking off. Get a step closer to actually realizing it instead of having some kind of fantasy about it."

The interview also touches on what it's like to live with Owens, his attendance at "sex clubs in the ’80s," and his current love life with his wife Michèle Lamy, who the designer calls his "Catherine Deneuve," a French actress who is considered to be Yves Saint Laurent's muse. 

Read the entire interview here

[via The Talks]

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