Rick Owens

Submission 3,165

About

Rick Owens is a fashion line and designer who holds the same name as his brand. Owens started his company in 1994 and has since built a career and reputation within high fashion discourse. Starting predominantly in 2019, Rick Owens memes surfaced on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok centering on hypebeast culture and the recognizable design of his clothes, most specifically his shoes. Many memes reference people as wearing, "Full Rick," as well as poking fun at unknowledgeable people who mistake his shoes for Converse All-Stars.

Background

Rick Owens was born in Fresno, California and raised in a conservative, Catholic household.^[1] He graduated high school and decided to pursue fine art at Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design.^[2] He dropped out after two years, stating in an interview with the New York Times, "I wanted to be an artist at the beginning. But then I didn’t think I had it in me. I didn’t think I had the intellectual stamina for it, so I decided to be a fashion designer, because that was frivolous and easy." He then took pattern-making and draping courses at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College.

He didn't launch his fashion line until 1994, operating out of a store on Hollywood Boulevard.^[1] In 2002, he was a recipient of the Perry Ellis Award for emerging talent. In 2003, he moved to Paris, France with his soon-to-be wife, Michèle Lamy, whom he married in 2006. In 2007, he won two more awards, the Cooper-Hewitt Design Award for fashion design^[3] and the Fashion Group International Rule Breaker Award.

Throughout his career, he was been well respected and well-liked among his peers. He's also launched other lines like a furniture line in 2005. In 2022, he is most active on Instagram,^[4] where he's amassed roughly 1.6 million followers.

Rick Owens Shoes

Rick Owens memes appeared en masse in mid-2019 on Instagram and Twitter. The first topic worthy of memes was Rick Owens shoes, known as Dunks. The shoes resemble Converse All-Stars and were first unveiled in Owens' 2006 Fall/Winter collection called "Dustulator."

The first Rick Owens shoes meme was shared on Instagram^[5] on June 5th, 2019 by the account fashion_wankers. They captioned an image of a Rick Owens shoe made to look like a cheeseburger, earning roughly 4,000 likes in three years (shown below). On June 13th, 2019, Twitter^[6] page BrailledFOTW tweeted an image of a foot that'd stepped on a USB brick, captioning it, "Rick owens," and earning over 70 likes in three years.

A stereotype started to manifest in memes regarding Rick Owens shoes looking like knock-off Converse. This cliché started to manifest in memes on TikTok in 2021. For instance, on October 3rd, 2021, TikToker^[7] rockstarbeebo posted a video that stated they were being made fun of for their "knock-off Converse," earning roughly 818,900 plays and 74,900 likes in six months (shown below).

Rick Owens Furry

The Rick Owens Furry refers to multiple images of a furry dressed in Rick Owens clothes. Images of the Rick Owens Furry, whose name is Tryst, went viral on Twitter in August 2021 despite Tryst posting "fit pics" online since 2019.

On February 26th, 2019, Tryst uploaded his first photo of himself dressed in Rick Owens to his Instagram^[8] (shown below, left). The photo received 237 likes over the course of one month. Tryst uploaded more photos of himself in his fursuit and Rick Owens clothes going into 2021. His most notable photo (shown below, right) was posted to Instagram^[9] on August 16th, 2020. The post received 239 likes over the course of one year.

Rick Owens Table

In April 2017, Rick Owens released a new table as a part of his furniture line that featured himself as a mannequin on all fours holding up the glass of the table with his back (shown below).

The table was referenced in a tweet^[10] in April 2015 but became more notorious in 2021. For instance, on September 10th, 2021, Twitter^[11] user 1bronclair captioned a photo of one with, "this really the hardest table ever," earning roughly 2,300 likes in seven months (shown below).