Rick Owens Commissioned Three Wax Statues of Himself
Rick Owens, the Los Angeles–born, Paris-based, Iggy Pop–esque fashion designer of cult-favorite leather jackets and boots, may not court the spotlight like certain other designers—but that doesn’t mean he’s content with the unassuming life.
In 2006, Owens revealed his first—yes, first—wax statue of himself, commissioned by the experts at Madame Tussauds.
“I came three times, like for fittings,” he told the Independent. “There were lots of photographs and measurements of my body and my face. I sat there and the sculptor is feeling my face and working on the clay. It was so intimate and quiet. I could see angles of my mother and father that I didn’t know I have. It really was very moving."
The result? A display at the Pitti Immagine trade show in Florence with the figure hung from the ceiling—his jeans pulled down—urinating on the floor. Today, the original’s scandalous bottom half is covered with a cloth, but it remains on display at Owens’s Paris boutique.
His second wax figure, in production now, will feature a Godzilla-style tail and find its home in Tokyo, while a third will stand in front of a wind machine (all the better for a windswept ’do, no?) at his store in Korea.
Vanity? Not quite. When the real Owens came face-to-face with the wax Owens, it wasn’t quite what he had in mind. “It’s not nearly disgusting enough,” he said. “It’s been prettified.”
“At a certain point in his life, when he reaches a level of stature, a man commissions his portrait to go over the fireplace,” Owens explained of his wax doppelgängers. “It’s a classical tradition, but I thought I’d do it in wax because that’s funnier. It’s my Dorian Gray moment.”
Get the full story at Independent.co.uk.
