Of Course Rick Owens Has Existential Breakdowns Over Jackets

Interview Magazine‘s Christopher Wallace sat in on a three-way call between Rick Owens and French designer Claude Montana. The conversation touched on myriad topics including costume design, the pursuit of perfection, and Owens’ proposed alternative to the already-contrarian idea of see-it-now buy-it-now fashion. Along the way, the American-born, Paris-based designer also speaks on his use of fashion shows as a means of conveying alternative ideas of beauty:

“The fashion world can be very strict on the standards of beauty, and I like pushing it around a little bit. I like teasing those ideas a little bit, by promoting quieter kinds of beauty. But also I am thinking about beautiful aspirations and beautiful behavior, and I have found that now, with the fashion shows, I am able to express that a little bit more than I used to. So now I can introduce ideas of, like, ‘What if we lived in a world without shame?’ — when I have guys with their dicks out. Or, with women carrying each other…”

As far as his perfectionism is concerned, Owens recounts a story of him having a fit and an existential crisis over imperfectly draped jackets:

“This week we were doing some jackets, these draped jackets, and, for some reason, we weren’t getting these drapes just right. For two days we were working on these jackets, and I was questioning everything, questioning my very existence: ‘I thought I knew what I was doing.’ Like, ‘Why can’t I control this?’ I was getting very, very uptight, which is the opposite of the serenity that I am trying to get to, the opposite of the serenity that I am trying to express… I was flustered. And that flustered me — the fact that I got flustered. It irritated me. And I was already irritated. It was a weird-ass week. I was a total cunt.”

Click here to read the interview in full, and if your life needs more goth in it, here’s Owens’ wife and muse, Michele Lamy, teaching you how to throw a punch.