Rick Owens remains one of the most daring and influential fashion designers working today. This new book of photographs describes an exceptionally fertile and transformational period in his career, one that saw him experiment with new shapes, the application of new materials, and an unprecedented use of color.

Lavishly documenting men’s and women’s collections and featuring Owens’ continuing collaboration with the photographer Danielle Levitt, this book is an unabashed love letter to one of the most devoted followings in contemporary fashion. Picking up where Rizzoli’s previous monograph on Owens’ work left off, looks from his critically lauded homage to the rock-and-roll designer Larry Legaspi set a frenzied visual pace that never lets up—right on through the pandemic when Owens memorably staged shows on the Lido di Venezia. 

The continued evolution of nearly three decades of Owens’ “grunge-meets-glamour” worldview is seen close up. Grace and grit are paired with an engineer’s obsession with structural transformation and movement, where diaphanous, flowing shapes contrast with sharp—and in one memorable collection, tented—objects. This formal invention is matched evenly by a mania for new and often exotic materials. The use of translucent bovine leathers, brightly dyed snakeskin, and the hide of the pirarucu, a massive Amazonian fish, are applied to old and new icons of the brand—like the KISS boots that have become instant cult favorites. Color is now firmly part of the Owens legendarium, and a profligacy of pink, orange, blue, green, and iridescent hues now vie with the trademark black, oxblood, and dust that have been part of the palette since the inception of the brand in mid-nineties Los Angeles. 

Owens’ newest provocations, grounded by the portraiture of Danielle Levitt, achieve a sublime unity in this volume, essential for lovers of avant-garde fashion, photography, and design.

The book can be purchased here.