Rick Owens on the Book That Inspired Him as a Young Man

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Rick is wearing his own clothing and accessoriesPhotography by William Waterworth, Styling by Jordan Duddy

Ahead of his upcoming retrospective at the Palais Galliera, Rick Owens talks to Susannah Frankel about the significance of À Rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans in his life

This article is taken from the Spring/Summer 2025 issue of AnOther Magazine:

“We’ve been preparing for a retrospective of my work at the Palais Galliera in Paris, and at one point the curator, Alexandre Samson, pointed out to me that I’ve been referencing À Rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans since my first interview, 30 years ago. He suggested it could be a thread for the show. I first read it as a Porterville kid, a redneck from a small town in California, and the fact that I identified with it and then ended up in Paris working in cultural aesthetics is kind of a great story. I mean, I knew that I could appreciate that kind of literature, that kind of aesthetic, but I never aspired to participate or connect with it, or even to visit Paris. That’s just not something we ever thought about in Porterville. Rereading it now, as an adult, comparing it to what it meant to me when I was younger, I thought, oh God, I totally get this. This was giving me an excuse to be isolated and solitary and moody and to completely indulge in my senses. This was my excuse and that was why I was relating to it so much. Just the rapture of it, the indulgence in beauty, wallowing like a pig in it – that was what was so compelling about it.

“And it’s still compelling. It’s still fun. It’s so dense and archaic. Also like, wow, how did I get here? How did I get from reading this book in my dad’s basement library? The whole reason I ever read À Rebours was because my dad had this big library. He was very literary. He read a lot of philosophy, theology, all of that stuff that was such a turn-off for me when I was young. But down in the basement he had the books he’d discarded, that he’d kept but weren’t his priority. And that’s where I found À Rebours. I also found Proust – I skimmed it for the dirty parts. I don’t know how I even knew there were dirty parts. I found Stéphane Mallarmé, Pierre Loti, Colette. My father was a very difficult man. He was an intellectual bully, a racist, a homophobe. In some ways we were mortal enemies, but there was also a sweetness, a streak of gold, a creative sensitivity that I benefited from greatly, which exposed me to art and literature and opera. It was like karma, because he was the man who turned me into the queen I am now. So, À Rebours, if it’s something that is the thread to a retrospective that I am having at the age of 63, that’s something – that’s a big thing, I think.”

Rick Owens moved to Paris with his wife, Michèle Lamy, more than 20 years ago and famously lives in a spectacular 18th-century townhouse, formerly the offices of François Mitterrand, lovingly restored to its original magnificent proportions and reimagined through Owens’s brutalist eye. Over the past decade in particular, the designer has become the creative behind many of the most powerful runway presentations in history, two of them held in his home. His highly distinctive, uncompromising aesthetic has earned him among the most loyal followings in contemporary fashion. Spending the majority of his time between Venice – his collections are produced in Italy – and the French capital, Owens says now: “Paris really does feel like the place where I belong. My house in Paris is where I feel the most comfortable, the most at ease.” Perhaps with that in mind, he is taking French lessons for the first time. “I thought, what does one do for true happiness as one gets older? Well, the most profound thing to do is to learn things. So I thought, OK, I’m getting old in Paris, this is my safe place, why don’t I learn French?” With said retrospective opening in June, Owens will record the audio guide – “in English but I’ll do it in French too, in my awkward American French. I’ll be like, you guys gave me a show, I’ll do this in my terrible French, it’s the polite thing to do.”

Rick is wearing his own clothing and accessories 

Hand-printing: Merrick d’Arcy-Irvine