Rick Owens on Lessons Learned from the Pandemic

The Business of Fashion Podcast

The Business of Fashion

Fashion & Beauty, Business, Arts

4.6 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2022

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The designer speaks with BoF editor-at-large Tim Blanks about his first collection after 2020 and why he feels a sense of optimism following the pandemic.

Background:

At the start of 2021, Rick Owens wanted his next show to reflect the universal toll the pandemic had taken on the world. Held at Venice’s Tempio Votivo, a shrine to the fallen soldiers of the two world wars, Owens centred the show around the sombre themes of “anger and darkness.” Despite this ominous outlook, Owens told BoF editor-at-large Tim Blanks in January 2021 that a pivot in political circumstances with the inauguration of Joe Biden gave him a sense of optimism.

On this week’s episode of the BoF Podcast, we revisit this thought provoking conversation with Owens about his Autumn/Winter 2021 collection, his reflections on lessons learned from the pandemic and his renewed hope for society.

Key Insights:

For Owens, constraints can create fertile ground for creativity. “It has been quiet change and I like the idea of working within small boundaries,” says Owen. “I like the idea of doing the best with what you have got.”
Owens created his collection when the world was facing growing political uncertainty and instability but he says “one of the most reassuring things [in this world] is that everything usually balances out. We have survived this long because there is just a tiny bit more of goodness than badness. Just enough to keep us surviving.”
Owen’s men’s shows in particular are deeply personal. “My men’s runway shows are always about men’s flaws and men’s worst urges because they are auto-biographical,” he says. “When I am thinking about men I am thinking about my own experience and my own experience is very critical and I am always very conscious of my worst urges and where they are coming from.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion.
0:07.4	Welcome to the Bof podcast. It's Friday, September 2nd.
0:11.3	This week, we're going back to one of my favorite conversations from during the pandemic.
0:16.0	Now, yes, it starts to feel like the pandemic is behind us, but there are a lot of lessons that we can learn from the time that we spent in lockdown,
0:24.8	the constraints it placed on our creativity,
0:27.6	and the opportunities it opened up for how things might be different going forward.
0:32.7	It seemed like a good moment to revisit this conversation
0:35.3	between the designer Rick Owens, who seems to be having
0:39.0	a renaissance these days with his collections taking a new kind of energy and our editor-at-large,
0:45.9	Tim Blanks. So here's Rick Owens on the B-O-F podcast.
0:52.0	I'm in a rectory. Oh, really?
0:56.2	You're doing the show for a directory.
0:59.3	Really?
1:00.2	Where about where, where, I thought you were doing the show in, um, in the Lido.
1:05.1	Yeah.
1:06.3	So I'm doing it at the Tempeo Votivo, which is at the main dock of Lita.
1:14.1	So when you're getting the Vaporado from Venice to Lido, this temple is the main monument
1:22.3	at this dock.
1:24.7	And, you know, the whole COVID and having to negotiate doing shows during this period,
1:37.3	it's given, it's been this great exercise in how do we reduce and how do we do something
1:43.3	that's modest, that's kind of respectful of the moment.
1:48.3	And, you know, we're not making all these people travel all over the world to come to come see us.
	...

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