Sitting Pretty:

Glam-grunge fashion designer to the stars Rick Owens expands his burgeoning empire to furniture design.

Glunge. No, it’s not the stuff you haul out of your shower drain while trying to avert your eyes. It’s actually the freshly minted word-of-the-moment used to describe the mix of glamour and grunge defined by cult Los Angelino fashion – and now, furniture – designer Rick Owens.

Playing out his dark and dramatic colour palettes in asymmetrical dresses, fitted jackets and soft knits, he was a hit with glunge muses like Courtney Love, Helena Bonham Carter and the ever-canny Madonna. In 2003, he relocated to Paris to take up the position of artistic director at the venerable luxury furrier Revillon, and lastyear unveiled the first of his furniture pieces constructed from resin, plywood, fibreglass, cashmere and bone.

In January, Owens showed his menswear collection and furniture designs at Pitti Uomo,a bi-annual trade fair in Florence. The idea behind the work is dust, with the installations titled Dusted and Dust Pump. “Dust represents the patina of time but also the stratification of thoughts,” he says. For Owens, designing clothing and furniture is essentially the same thing. “It’s natural for me to visualise things in a three-dimensional way, in relation to the human form.” Despite the design-speak, he says his aim is to create a glamour that is inclusive and not exclusive. His inspirations are as disparate as furniture designer/architect Eileen Gray, sculptor Brancusi, and the skate parks of California.Humbly comparing his own aesthetic with Brancusi’s he says, “[it’s just] a slab of metal ona hunk of wood. But it’s about the right piece of metal, the right hunk of wood and the perfect gesture.”