Why it belongs in ORBIS
The lord of darkness — glunge grandeur, Kiss boots and brutalist glamour from his Paris Palais bunker.
Richard Saturnino Owens left California for Paris and built fashion's most complete dark universe. Since 1994 the label has run on what he calls "glunge" — glamour plus grunge — draped jersey the color of ash, leather like armor, and the Kiss boots and Geobaskets that made brutalism wearable. He shows in the Palais de Tokyo's shadow and lives above the store: the Place du Palais Bourbon headquarters is home, showroom and manifesto at once.
Owens is that rarest thing, an independent who scaled without softening. The runway spectacles — American step teams built into human pyramids, models carrying models, fog and fire — are performance art that happens to sell coats. The furniture line in alabaster and bronze, Michèle Lamy's parallel mythology, and the DRKSHDW diffusion extend the world without diluting it.
Three decades in, the silhouette is instantly his: elongated, monastic, post-apocalyptic and strangely serene. Fashion's lord of darkness turned out to be its most consistent romantic — every collection another cathedral in black.