- I was working with a dealer in New York
who would send me images of sarcophaguses
that were up for auction.
Finally, this one came, it was so worth the wait.
We call her Liza after Liza Minelli.
[Un Bel di Vedremo, Madame Butterfly]
Hi Vogue.
I'm Rick Owens and this is my place in Concordia, Italy.
My factory is across the street
and this is where I come to do my collections.
In this space, I don't like living with a lot of things.
I'm not very acquisitive but the things that I do live with
are very special to me.
And I'm gonna show you around.
Okay.
[Un Bel di Vedremo, Madame Butterfly]
I wouldn't call myself a collector,
maybe more of an eliminator,
but the few things that I have
are probably things that I've wanted for a really long time.
This is a George Minne sculpture.
He was a Belgian sculptor
associated with the Viennese secession.
It's called Kneeling Youth and it's a study, I believe,
for a fountain that's encircled
by these youths leaning over it.
It's about introversion, introspection, narcissism.
Well, this is my interpretation.
I just like the mood that it creates.
It's kind of severe and a little bit maudlin,
a little bit melancholy, but also vaguely spiritual.
When I am in Concordia, I am focused on creating.
This is a period of rigor and this is a period of training
and the gym takes up pretty much half the apartment.
In any place that I've ever lived in,
including Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles,
I've always insulated an upholstered my spaces
with army blankets, vintage army blankets.
This is inspired by Joseph Beuys
who was my first art hero when I went to art school
and he used army blankets as a symbol of protection
and insulation and isolation.
The army surplus store was
where I would get my original fabrics.
I would make clothes out of the duffle bags,
out of blankets, out of parachute clothes.
Since then, which must be like 30 years ago,
every place I have, I cover with army blankets.
When I work on interiors or furniture,
I'm pretty much a reductivist.
I don't think about domestic details that much.
They feel a little fussy to me,
so the domesticity in this apartment is pretty minimal.
[classical piano music]
That's my closet.
I don't have very many clothes.
That's a little stack of, t-shirts,
a little stack of shorts, for here, for the factory,
for every day and that's pretty much it.
I always kind of like sticking to a decision.
So when I pick an outfit I'll pretty much stick to it
for a couple of years.
My clothing choices have evolved from Hollywood Boulevard,
it's always been some kind of shorts
and it just gradually changes over the years.
Every collection,
I just have 20 more shorts made
and I just have little stacks of them everywhere.
When I first put this place together, seven years ago,
I wanted Italian rationalism,
I wanted something kind of monastic,
something kind of severe.
I like the classical tone of travertine interior sets.
I like putting myself into that zone.
I wanted someplace that would be a blank space for me.
So I could get into a zone of putting a collection together.
I might have overdone it,
I put travertine everywhere I could.
I put it on the walls, on the floor.
I wanted a travertine box to work in,
kind of like a cave, a travertine cave.
Something stone, I know that I wanted to live in stone.
I've always been impressed by the skulls
in Italian churches.
This skull I got from a medical school auction years ago,
and I use it as a memento mori,
as a reminder that all is vanity.
That one day my skull is gonna be on somebody else's desk.
So seize the day, seize the moment.
The pistols are from my father's collection.
He was a very conservative, kind of stridently moralist,
who I had a - [clears throat]
difficult relationship with.
We used to be horrified, Mom and me,
about having guns around the house,
but now they are an affectionate reminder of him.
And I like the association with the Kneeling Youth,
with the gym in between.
The vulnerability of youth, the vitality of the gym
and the resolution of the skull and the pistols.
The terrace overlooks the factory right over there.
I asked the gardeners or the landscape artists to
never touch this garden.
I wanted it as shaggy, as chaotic,
as wild as possible.
Oh, look at those.
Beautiful.
Shaggy.
These chairs are by
the Italian futurist artist Giacomo Balla,
they're very severe and yet kind of fantastic
at the same time.
Giacomo Balla is usually a lot more colorful than this.
So I was really lucky to find something so subdued.
They are so uncomfortable.
They're hard.
The angle of the back it's-
you have to sit so upright.
So it feels like a church pew, a little bit punishing.
I rarely sit in them,
but I love them so much.
And I've probably kind of knocked them off
with my furniture collection, to a certain extent.
One of my favorite things that I do like to wear,
even though I don't wear very many things,
is this robe.
I've indulged myself with this
from my spring/summer 17 collection.
It is silk taffeta lined with a cotton pello ovo fabric.
It is regal and cozy on a winter morning
when I'm wandering around having coffee on the terrace.
[dramatic orchestral classical music]
But my favorite object is this one.
I was working with a dealer in New York who would send me
images of sarcophaguses that were up for auction,
and they were always a little bit too colorful.
And they always kind of looked a little fake to me.
But anyway, finally, this one came and so
it was so worth the wait.
We call her Liza after Liza Minelli.
Space in this building became available a few years ago
and we entered into an agreement to collaborate
with the family that was running it.
And to turn it into an Owenscorp Bar.
It is part canteen for our crew,
our team that is in the factory right across the street
but it's also for the community.
I mean, it's open to everybody.
We've included furniture pieces
from the Rick Owens furniture collection.
We have bronze pieces from our accessories
and home objects collection.
And the pièce de résistance of this space
is this mural by my daughter, Scarlet Rouge.
This mural was inspired by the Larry Legaspi show
that I had just done.
I'd also put out a book on Larry Legaspi
and in the book he talks about his fascination
with the movie, "Things to Come" by HG Wells from the 1930s.
This was a movie that, independently,
before I ever heard of Larry Legaspi,
I had known about this movie and it inspired me too.
And I asked Scarlet, my daughter,
to reference it in these murals
that she did for the showroom for that collection.
I love the pop impact of it.
They are gestural, quick, drippy,
almost violent, reckless lines
that give a certain energy to this space.
I don't like a lot of decoration
but if you're gonna do a decoration,
I want it to be as extravagant and as dramatic
and as extreme as possible.
And I think that's what this is.
[playful piano music]
I've been working in this office for 20 years
and I've never repainted it
because I like the patina of all of the tape marks
and all of the pencil marks of all of the collections
that we've gone through.
I like having that sense of memory.
These pieces have been with me for a while.
These are objects from our, I guess, homeware collection.
We have a bronze gored vase and rock crystal goblets.
I think of these as relics of the pieces
that we do for the interiors.
These could be futuristic, or they could be ancient.
I like that we're using the classical materials,
like bronze and rock crystal.
Everything that I do
is kind of a blend of the past
and the futuristic.
So that they kind of create a retro futuristic aesthetic
that I've been developing over the years.
For several years I have been collecting
these Onagadori rooster feathers.
They were bred, originally, in the 17th century, Japan.
My father had a library in the basement
full of Japanese art books.
And I remember seeing watercolors, old watercolors,
of Onagadori roosters in those books.
What's great about them is that
the roosters themselves live on tall perches,
which allows the feathers to be undisturbed and pristine.
And over the years,
I've been in contact with a farm in Japan
that will send me the feathers that fall off.
And so I've collected a few and I'm hell bent
on collecting as many as I can.
And I like to have them around to remind next to myself
of unlimited possibilities.
I like to start from a clean slate every collection
but these have stayed here.
These have been here for close to 20 years.
I had a fantasy of actually breeding them myself
but that's not very practical,
but you know one day, maybe.
[playful instrumental music]
Thank you Vogue, for allowing me to share my world.
Every day, I'm very grateful that I ended up here.
Arrivederci.