This story is part of My First Job in Fashion , interviews with fashion insiders on the roles who made them who they are today.
My very first job that I got paid for was working shifts at Taco Bell, back in Porterville, California. And you don’t want to hear about that. I was going nowhere much. My parents were worried, so my mom drove me to LA to go to art school. I dropped out. I was really intimidated by all the classes, in theory, which I now know to be bullshit. Plus, I couldn’t really afford it. Instead I did a pattern-making course at trade school. Dad had always said I should learn a skill. This got me work at a small studio called the LA Design Group. And I did that for around two years, working with this wonderful sample maker: Ricardo was gruff, a little cranky, silent and also the most exquisite sewer. Eventually I earned his respect. But this is all to preface what I’m counting as my real first job: the gig that led to what became Rick Owens. And that job was working for Michèle.
There’s a video on YouTube someone found of me on MTV at around this time, in 1988. Looking at it now, of course, I cringe. But objectively it’s an interesting time capsule. I’m incredibly cocky. And you know, I just don’t remember having that confidence — a confidence bordering on arrogance. And I don’t think I was high, although I might have had a cocktail or something. I think I was just performing, frantically performing, overcompensating for being shy. And I wonder if that’s what I was like when I first met her.
It happened through Rick Castro, the fetish photographer. One day he said to me, “I’m gonna do a menswear collection for Michèle Lamy. So do you want to cut the patterns, freelance?” I said sure. I knew of Michèle already, kind of; I would have met her in the clubs a couple of times. We moved in different circles but drag is where we would have intersected. Because Michèle had gained our respect by having a show at the Plaza, which was this drag club frequented by Mexicans, using the girls that work there. It was great. She was doing clothes that were like a California sportswear version of Zoran. They were exuberant.
Anyway, Rick Castro. He was working with his partner Michi Tomimatsu. They were stylists and they made these weird little hats — the name of their company was I Love Ricky — and Michèle bought the hats for her store, which is how they’d worked together until this menswear idea came about. He took me to her studio on Traction Avenue, Downtown LA, and that was the very first time I met her. It was in this big loft space and I was wearing the clothes, trying them on for her. She was sitting under the skylight surrounded by all these cutting tables, and it was all very pretty.
Rick’s concept for the collection at the time was kind of Alaïa for men. So everything was super tight, and it was a jockstrap; it was these leggings that had seams on the ass, and it was a tank top. They were all in Lycra cottons in these subdued colours — army green and black. It was extreme and quite contemporary. I guess she liked it, because we kept doing it. And eventually, Michèle offered to hire us full-time.
Before that, I had to go to what I guess was an interview, because I still didn’t really know her then. It was in this tea house in Little Tokyo. She always says I had a really good look. It was probably nail polish, eye makeup and my really big, chunky nose ring. And I wore a durag in those days. It was made out of the most beautiful brown silk-jersey that I’d picked up at a remnant shop, this magic little shop — I’ve never seen silk-jersey like it since. I don’t remember her being that chatty. And if she was, I probably didn’t understand her very well because she was very hard to understand then for me. I probably must have done all of the talking. Which is what makes me think about that YouTube video, where I was really putting on a show.
So there was this period at the beginning where Rick Castro was the designer for Lamy Men and he was taking all the credit, which makes complete sense. The first time she presented in New York, Rick went and I didn’t. WWD was talking about that show. They were very much clutching their pearls about having to look at Tony Ward in a silver lamé jockstrap at a morning show. And there is a great video directed by Michèle’s husband at the time, Richard Newton, of the men’s collection. It’s like a military recruitment: all these guys getting their heads shaved, showering, getting inoculated, putting on these jockstraps, all to a Laibach soundtrack.
Rick Castro, Michi and I worked in a mezzanine over the shipping area in the warehouse that usually had a garage door opened onto the street. Since most of the shipping crew were young artists from the area, we had a huge sound system blasting Kiss and house music mixes all day. Back then, we still used hand-cut cardboard patterns that were hand-traced onto layers of fabrics spread by the cutters. Now, the patterns are computer programmed and printed out, of course.
During that time there was friction between me and Rick. I was going to quit. I don’t remember if I quite said “It’s him or me,” but maybe I did. So he left, and we didn’t speak for years. In the end it became quite fun being arch-enemies. Everybody called us ‘Good Rick’ and ‘Bad Rick’. It was an amusing rivalry. After Rick left, Michi stayed, and as well as working on the men’s collection while it lasted, I worked with her.
I do look back very fondly on it this time. I remember before I moved into Michèle’s house on Hancock Park there was this very glamorous period when I was living on Hollywood Boulevard. Because I was working I could afford this tiny, just exquisite apartment in one of those old Mediterranean-style palazzo buildings that was kind of falling apart. It was really pretty. And all of the bars were there; there were like five gay bars within walking radius. So we would just go on drinking tours. There was The Firefly, there was The Spotlight, there was The Blacklight. And there was the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel that had the lounge underneath it.
I vividly recall going to see Nina Simone perform there one night. I was walking by myself down Hollywood Boulevard wearing my platforms and my makeup. I had a long, black velvet cape. I was insufferable. And I remember this drunk homeless guy suddenly lurching out of the doorway as I was passing. He goes: “You’ve got the whole world in front of you.” I walked by, flicking my cigarette.
One Halloween, after about two years of me working there, Michèle and I became friends. I remember helping her do her hair and then going out and dancing. Suddenly it was comfortable for us to hang out. It wasn’t romantic at the beginning. Although she was always very vixeny. She always wore leggings with some kind of loose top and then a weird hat and a lot of jewellery. She was wildly attractive. I was definitely checking out her figure. Then, we came to Paris for something business related. And at one point I got really drunk, and I jumped her. That tried-and-tested method of seduction.
The jump occurred in Paris, then things proceeded back in Los Angeles. I remember the first time it was apparent at the factory that something was happening between us. Everybody could tell from the way we were looking at each other. Later, somebody told me that our press guy, Brian Watson, said: “Oh my God — there’s the end of the company.”
There were other changes happening. The company was in a position where it was going to have to start manufacturing somewhere other than LA, and change pricing and distribution, and do a lot more in order to get to another level. So Michèle was looking for partners and backers, and she had some who didn’t work out. And at the same time she had taken over Café des Artistes from a French friend of hers. She got into that and she really made it a success. And she started turning over more of the design business. She had an assistant named Ling Ling who was creating the bread-and-butter pieces that made everything flow. I was making weird and wonderful and fun stuff that didn’t make any money. In fact, I was a waste of money. Michèle gravitated more towards the café life, and then that, all of a sudden, took on a life of its own and became this big scene. And it came to the point where she just threw her hands up about the fashion business, and threw herself into the café. She shuttered the company. And that was it. I didn’t have a job anymore. So we stopped. And then I started doing my own collections. And Brian Watson was right!
I think everyone assumes Michèle invested at the beginning, but neither of us had any money to spare. Hers had all gone into the fashion business and the café — and then her restaurant. It was an expensive transition. That restaurant was legendary, and it was fabulous. But it was also a huge investment, and it was always going to be hard to make that back. She was going to be stuck to it forever.
Meanwhile, I was making stuff myself. I took it to the best store that I could find at the time, and I got 50 per cent down payment from him on the order and another 50 per cent upon delivery. That’s how I survived for a couple of years at the beginning. Afterwards, when I got a distribution deal in Europe, Michèle came with me. And that was it: we just left. We landed in Paris.
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