Moncler goes to the dark side...
“Fundamentally, in fashion and in life, you have to know the rules to know how to break them” Rick Owens
Richard Saturnino Owens it is one of the best things that have happened to fashion in the last century. And not everyone should agree with this statement, after all, pleasing everyone means that you are doing something wrong.
His genuine work, together with the way of communicating it, has led him to create own style, the glunge (mix between glamor and gunge) and forge a dark empire –together with his wife Michèle Lamy– where the ultimate goal is none other than perfection in each of its pieces.
The dark and fascinating universe of the American designer knows no limits: furniture and decorative objects, jewelry, books, its own line of gym machines....
When it comes to Rick Owens, no one can predict what's next. The latest news from him is nothing less than a tourist bus, created in collaboration with Moncler and that presented in the framework of Milan Fashion Week.
tourist brutalism
A WORK OF ART, A BUS AND A JOURNEY THROUGH THE DESERT
Many will wonder why a bus, and when it comes to Rick Owens, everything has its reason for being: it all started when artist Michael Heizer invited Owens and his wife to view his monumental artwork in the Nevada desert, whose creation process has taken 48 years.
"I hadn't been to the West Coast since I moved to Europe 18 years ago," says Rick Owens in a statement.
“I thought of Joseph Beuys traveling to the United States from Germany in the seventies, landing at JFK, wrapped in felt, and taken by ambulance to his New York gallery to live with a wild coyote for three days in his I Like America and America Likes Me installation, then straight back to Germany the same way…”, explains the designer.
The vehicle chosen to make the journey there was not a jeep, an SUV or a van, it was a bus!
Rick Owens and Michelè Lamy during their road trip
A VERY RICK OWENS BUS
“Moncler proposed a collaboration and I took the opportunity to propose something different: customize a tour bus for a road trip from Los Angeles to Michael Heizer's ranch in Nevada,” says Rick Owens.
Thus, Moncler facilitated a collaboration with a tourist bus company, the result of which was a unique brutalist bus in matte black, aboard which Owens and Lamy traveled from Los Angeles to Heizer's ranch in Nevada.
The tour took them through Las Vegas and Area 51, making a detour to Heizer's artwork, Double Negative.
The bus was presented as part of the Milan Fashion Week and is available for purchase on request. Of course, do not expect rows of seats separated by a narrow aisle -we know that you do not expect such a thing coming from Rick Owens-, well the interior of the bus is gray and upholstered with military blankets.
Nylon, metallic tones and a bed where you can stay to travel the world on wheels They make up the perfect equipment for this brutalist and sophisticated vehicle in equal parts.
Owens on the outside, Moncler on the inside
MONCLER + RICK OWENS: THE COLLECTION
In addition to the bus, Rick Owens and Michèle Lamy have created an exclusive capsule collection (completely independent of the Moncler Genius Project), Moncler + Rick Owens, for the firm, famous for its quilted down jackets and its sport line.
“A story about personal and intimate space”, This is how Owens describes the collection, in which sports-style looks are topped off with huge furry boots and mammoth-style laces, all in dark tones, of course.
The unstructured down jackets –pay attention to the padded, sleeveless jacket–, which appear like true sculptures on the skin, appear in a sort of extraterrestrial desert in which the sandy soil blends with the lunar surface, or rather, with a planet called Rick Owens.
Moncler x Rick Owens