Rick Owens and the Concrete Wardrobe

Most fashion designers borrow from architecture in a mood-board sort of way. Rick Owens took the next step and built furniture out of it. The result is one of the clearest case studies of what a Brutalist sensibility looks like when it is applied to things people sit on and wear.

• Owens grounds his interiors in 20th-century design, particularly 1960s Brutalist architecture; he says he “started from Brutalism and then merged it into Arte Povera” ^[1].
• His signature materials include concrete, bone and French wool army blankets, and his “prong seat” is cast aluminum ^[1].
• Owens has described his guiding idea as reducing necessities “to a fur on a rock next to a fire in a cave” ^[1].
• He started his eponymous label in Los Angeles in 1994 and, by Business of Home’s account, has applied a punk and anarchist sensibility to furniture since 2007 ^[2].

From clothing label to concrete

Owens started his eponymous label in Los Angeles in 1994 and, by Business of Home’s account, has applied a punk and anarchist sensibility to furniture since 2007 ^[2]. The furniture grew into an art-world subject in its own right: MOCA’s Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles staged “Rick Owens: Furniture,” showing his furniture, large-scale sculptures and videos alongside work by the late artist and musician Steven Parrino ^[2]. His own account of the style is a historian’s shorthand with a twist: “I think I started from Brutalism and then merged it into Arte Povera,” he told the magazine, noting that his personal evolution ran backward relative to the historical one ^[1].

Materials with a point

The materials are chosen as carefully as a fabric. Concrete, bone and French wool army blankets recur across his work, and the blankets carry meaning: “The relics of war are a reminder of the fragility of peace and protection,” Owens says ^[1]. His signature “prong seat” is an aluminum chair with curved forms and protruding faceted elements ^[1].

The manifesto in a sentence

Owens has summarized his design thinking in one sentence: reduce necessities “to a fur on a rock next to a fire in a cave” ^[1]. It is a surprisingly accurate description of his clothes as well: long, draped, monochrome, built from a few strong gestures and not decorated.

In his own words

Owens’s furniture has been shown in galleries as well as stores. His exhibition “Glade” at Carpenters Workshop Gallery in London ran through October 25, 2019, produced with his wife and collaborator Michèle Lamy, and included sculptural head pieces from his Spring/Summer 2020 collection shown at Paris Fashion Week ^[1]. He says “Furniture is just an outer layer of a look,” an extension of personal expression, which explains why a bed or a chair can look like a garment in another medium ^[1].

His choice of materials carries meaning. He describes the French wool army blankets as relics of war that remind us of the fragility of peace and protection ^[1]. As his ideal model of a home he cited a room at the Centre Pompidou in Paris where Giuseppe Penone’s laurel-leaf installation sits next to Joseph Beuys’s felt room with Carl Andre’s zinc floor ^[1]. Those references explain the link to Arte Povera and Brutalism the article describes: raw materials, a hard-edged plan and a feeling of ritual, applied to things you wear and things you sit on.

What a shopper can take from it

You do not need a concrete chair to borrow the idea. The Owens approach translates into three habits: a small, tight palette of black, ash and bone; one dramatic silhouette and nothing fussy around it; and materials that look better worn than new. His furniture and his clothing share a single argument, that restraint with the right materials reads as luxury.

Questions readers ask

Is Rick Owens a Brutalist designer?

He cites Brutalist architecture as a core influence, and says his interior approach is rooted in 1960s Brutalism, later merged with Arte Povera ^[1].

What materials does Rick Owens use in furniture?

Concrete, bone and French wool army blankets are signature materials ^[1].