“It’s part Levi’s jacket, part biker jacket, part Madeleine Vionnet,” Rick Owens told Vogue in 2003, describing one of his signature pieces. “All that, cut apart and somehow Scotch-taped together.” The dissident designer was talking specifically about a machine-washed and tumble-dried leather jacket—but he might just as well have been discussing the aesthetic of his entire oeuvre.

Equal parts grunge and glamour (or make that “glunge,” as he calls it), Owens’s work has earned a die-hard following. His trademark is a practical piece, draped to angelic standards yet informed by the dark underworld of his imagination. His ability to marry wearable luxury with a rock ’n’ roll attitude has lured any number of edge-courting celebrities into the Rick Owens cult: Rihanna is among his acolytes.

After high school, Owens headed to Los Angeles to study fine art at the Otis College of Art and Design. After two years, he dropped out and took a pattern-cutting course at a technical college. Soon he was clocking hours at knockoff factories around L.A. It wasn’t the typical career path for an aspiring young designer, but it eventually paid off when it led him to Michèle Lamy, a French woman who ran a sportswear company in the city and shared his taste for the sinister. He went to work for her; they fell in love; and business and pleasure mingled under one roof.

In addition to her fashion line, Lamy owned popular nightspot Les Deux Cafés, and she helped expose Owens’s designs by wearing his distressed T-shirts and skirts. Hip restaurant patrons, including Courtney Love, started asking Lamy what she was wearing and coming over to the couple’s home to buy a few things. By the early 2000s, a slew of high-end department stores—including Maxfield and Barneys New York—was carrying the label. Owens and Lamy moved to France in 2003. Geographically, financially, and creatively, it was a whole new world.

Owens has never lost his rebel street cred, though—and he doesn’t ever intend to: “As time passes,” he said in 2006, “I want to become more and more Rick Owens.”

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