Rick Owens Started Designing Sneakers Because They Frustrated Him
From humble DIY beginnings to a Nike lawsuit.
Rick Owens’s latest menswear collection, “Walrus,” seemed to toy with the audience’s obsession with his footwear, obscuring his models’ feet under elephantine curtains of rippling fabric. But in a new interview with Footwear News, the enigmatic designer spoke on the role that sneakers have played in his artistic oeuvre. The conversation touches upon Owens’s humble DIY beginnings as a designer in California to his creative dynamic with wife and “no-bullshit magic witch” Michele Lamy. Read on below for the kicks-centric quoteables and click here to read it in its entirety.
On his DIY beginnings:
Like I’ve done with everything in my life, you fake it until it comes true. I actually used to mold rubber soles myself, because at the time I couldn’t afford the minimums. The construction was completely wrong.
On the inspirations behind the original Geobasket:
Sports shoes were never my thing. The only reason I started making them was because they frustrated me. They were a little too prosaic. I wanted to exoticize them.
He was unfazed by Nike’s lawsuit; rather, he was flushed that they had noticed him:
I was just flattered to death. I swooned.
On the challenges of crafting a spectacle of a fashion show:
I don’t think it’s possible to really shock anybody anymore, although I’m surprised sometimes. I don’t want to waste people’s time. It’s a busy calendar, so if you’re going to do a show, do a show.
On his next sneaker silhouette:
It’s a sleeker, lighter, lower skater shoe I call the Geothrasher.
