Rick Owens is a Paris based clothing brand created by Porterville, California native Rick Owens. The famous designer studied fashion design at the city’s Otis College of Art and Design and then at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College where he learned pattern-making and draping.  But to get his big break Rick Owens moved to Paris in 2003 which makes his big return to California a poignant one.

On opening his first flagship store in Los Angeles the designer shares,

‘Hollywood is about self-invention and that’s where I invented myself, so opening a store there is kind of a special moment,’

The new L.A. flagship store is a refurbished ribbon factory built in the 1920s located on La Brea along the same block as ‘The Plaza Salon Bar’ – a Mexican drag bar where Owens spent time partying 20 years ago.

To renovate the 4,800 square feet warehouse Owens enlisted the talents of architect Anna Tumaini with whom the designer has worked with on everything from his European stores to his private apartments in Venice and Concordia.

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The space is an homage to American filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille. Ceilings are high and supported by massive angular beams while dramatic features such as a ‘fog wall’, a shallow floor-to-ceiling glass tank that fills with a billowing ejaculation of fog every five minutes, capture the imagination.

An abstract swimming pool in the center of the space takes the form of a floor to ceiling tank releasing slow-rising bubbles while an empty open courtyard with white walls that Owen’s likens to a movie screen reflects light all around the space.

‘All of these movie references sound pretty corny but they’re sincere,’ says Owens. ‘Epic biblical movies were the first idea of exoticism I could cling to growing up and have influenced everything I do. This store is as close as I might ever get to recreating that. I hope Mr DeMille would approve.’

Rick Owens
La Brea Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90038