{"id":8162,"date":"2010-05-24T17:55:20","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T16:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/?p=8162"},"modified":"2010-05-24T17:55:21","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T16:55:21","slug":"rick-owens-interview-his-inspiration-for-furniture-exhibition-pavane-for-a-dead-princess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/?p=8162","title":{"rendered":"Rick Owens Interview: His Inspiration for Furniture Exhibition ‘Pavane for a Dead Princess’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Designer Rick Owens is a romantic of the highest order. While his creations display the precision of a master craftsman, his ideas are rooted in nostalgia and fantasy. To showcase the titanic bed, daybed and elements that make up his latest furniture collection, Pavane for a Dead Princess, he and his wife, Michele Lamy, installed the pieces\u2014which together amount to two tons of alabaster\u2014at New York\u2019s Salon 94. Owens took a load off to talk with us about 30s Hollywood, haiku and artistic monasticism.
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\nHow did the idea of doing an exhibit based on your own bedroom come about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I just did the furniture for a one-shot deal when we made it for our house (on the Left Bank in Paris). I showed it for my men\u2019s collection as a background just for fun and then it developed a life of its own. We got involved with the gallery Jousse and Michele said, \u201cWe gotta do something for New York. [The gallerists] think we should do the bedroom.\u201d I know that our bedroom has this thing that people respond to when they visit. I\u2019m not exactly sure what it is, but it is a lifestyle and it\u2019s personal and it has a romance attached to it.<\/p>\n

And you\u2019ve elaborated on your own bedroom for this show?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes. Because we were coming to New York we needed to rise to the occasion, so I was thinking, \u201cLet\u2019s do something monolithic.\u201d I was working in marble but marble is a little bit too cold. And then I thought, \u201cAlabaster.\u201d There is something mythological and almost biblical about alabaster\u2014it\u2019s so ancient. But also it\u2019s very Art Deco. If it\u2019s good enough for Pierre Chareau, it\u2019s good enough for Rick Owens.<\/p>\n

What did the preparation for the show involve? Alabaster is heavy! <\/strong><\/p>\n

It was a breeze for me. This is Michele\u2019s baby. Michele and I have such a different way of working. Everything in my factories is done exactly my way and that\u2019s it. In this situation she\u2019s running around town, connecting artisans to one another. But, you know, I have no patience with that. If people aren\u2019t on time it makes me crazy and I get real fascist, but she\u2019s great with that stuff.<\/p>\n

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\nI know you live by the ethic, \u201cWe don\u2019t buy; we make.\u201d Is that how the furniture you made for your house first came about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. If I could have done anything I wanted to, I would have stuffed it with [Jacques-\u00c9mile] Ruhlmann, Jean Dunand and Jean-Michel Frank\u201430s Art Deco furniture. But all of that is too small, besides the fact that it costs a fortune and we couldn\u2019t afford to fill the house with it. And I don\u2019t know if Michele would have even liked it\u2014she doesn\u2019t like that kind of furniture as much as I do. So we just customized everything because it makes it specifically ours.<\/p>\n

Does the furniture you design come from the same aesthetic as your clothes?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Totally. You know, that same period in clothes was always my inspiration: Mariano Fortuny and Madame Gr\u00e8s and Vionnet, and that 30s and 40s classic Hollywood sensibility, with big white satin Art Deco chairs. That\u2019s what we\u2019re doing, but in a black leather and ripped T-shirt kind of way.<\/p>\n

The pieces feel medieval, like a Pope\u2019s furniture.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, temples were always a big reference for me because [I went] to Catholic school. When I first started making clothes they were all grey and dragging on the ground. Afterwards I analyzed it and that was a direct reference to living in a conservative and very boring little town [his native Porterville, California] and [then being exposed to] the exoticism of those saints in the Bible, wandering around in those temples, dragging those dusty robes, on a higher spiritual level. That was pretty romantic.
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\nThat\u2019s interesting because you have described your own life as being monastic, with a strict routine, gym and work.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, well it\u2019s great having a little sense of purpose, but I\u2019m the first to mock it. It\u2019s just fashion. I\u2019m certainly not sacrificing anything, because I can\u2019t think of anything more glamorous than working on making beautiful things.<\/p>\n

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Check out pics from current exhibition here<\/a>, running through June 25 at Salon 94, 243 Bowery, NYC<\/p>\n

www.nowness.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Designer Rick Owens is a romantic of the highest order. While his creations display the precision of a master craftsman, his ideas are rooted in nostalgia and fantasy. To showcase the titanic bed, daybed and elements that make up his latest furniture collection, Pavane for a Dead Princess, he and his wife, Michele Lamy, installed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8162"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8195,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8162\/revisions\/8195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}