Rick Owens Launches Furniture Book
Rick Owens is unveiling his first book dedicated to his career as furniture designer at Milan Design Week on Thursday. Titled “Rick Owens: Furniture,” the oversize coffee-table book, which is published by Rizzoli New York, retraces Owens and his wife Michèle Lamy’s creative process.
The designer introduced his first furniture collection in Paris in 2007.
“I love beautiful books,” said Owens, explaining the reasons why he decided to develop the project. “And I want to preserve my work on my terms with my edit.”
The book collects a range of images showing Owens’ different working environments, as well as his creations infused with his distinctive style combining contrasting forces. Art Deco, leather bars, World War II concrete bunkers and Egyptian tombs seen in black-and-white Thirties Hollywood movies are the major sources of inspirations, which Owens mentioned as references of his work.
“How does a bird learn how to fly? You just do what you were meant to do,” said Owens, asked about the roots of his passion for furniture and design. “I would be in a corner making stuff whether anyone was paying attention or not.”
Owens added that he uses the same approach whether he designs a fashion collection or furniture pieces. “It’s about modesty versus extravaganza, civilization versus wildness and control versus collapse,” he explained.
The book also unveils the process behind the “Rick Owens: Furniture” exhibition, hosted by Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art, or MOCA, from December 2016 to April 2017. The exhibit contained about 20 percent classic pieces and 80 percent new works, many of which Owens and Lamy conceived for his newest store in New York’s SoHo, which opened last August at 30 Howard Street on the corner of Crosby Street in the space formerly occupied by Jil Sander.
Owens will also organize an exhibition at the 2018 Milan Triennale, which will be a comprehensive look at his fashion oeuvre and his furniture.
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