GRAPHIC COMMUNICATION 3 ROCKSTAR: ILFORD GRAPHIC COMMUNICATION 3 ROCKSTAR: ILFORD GRAPHIC COMMUNICATION 3 ROCKSTAR: ILFORD GRAPHIC COMMUNICATION 3 ROCKSTAR: ILFORD GRAPHIC COMMUNICATION 3 ROCKSTAR: ILFORD GRAPHIC COMMUNICATION 3 ROCKSTAR: ILFORD GRAPHIC COMMUNICATION 3 ROCKSTAR: ILFORD 8 9 NME are East London’s newest post-punk band and they are angry. Named after the surburban town they affectionately nicknamed the “trench - es”, Ilford are a band heavily influenced by the sound and style of one of the genre’s pioneers, Magazine. Frontman, Willis Kiniu, cited their first album ‘Real Life’ as “incredibly important" in his formative years. 10 11 NME Though he is now regarded as one of the fashion industry’s most prolific collaborators — with partnerships with brands including Moncler, Adidas, Converse and Birkenstock under his belt — teaming with other brands didn’t always come naturally to Rick Owens. In fact, before he took the plunge, it was an endeavour that he viewed with “deep scorn”, he chuckles over a Zoom call from Paris, where he’s sat in an airy room in the concrete-walled townhouse he calls home. Mercifully for all of us, his attitude shifted when he realised that — while they may often serve as marketing gimmicks — their capacity for introducing the previously unknown to vast new audiences is not to be baulked at; a decision that has since established Rick as the jokingly self-styled “king of collaborations”. The products born of his collaborative rela- tionship with Moncler are particular standouts, fusing his dark, directional design sensibility with the Italian luxury brand’s iconic down puffers. A previous iteration of the link-up saw Rick and Michèle Lamy, his wife, Founding Partner and Managing Director Art/Furniture of Owenscorp, take to the road in a custom-designed Rick Owens + Moncler tour bus, and reimagine iconic Rick Owens pieces and silhouettes — think column-like cocooning coats and wide-set shorts — in Moncler’s nylon duvet. For the latest chapter of their collaboration, released as one of seven co-branded pieces released to toast the house’s 70th anniversary, Rick has interpreted one of Moncler’s most symbolic pieces: the Maya jacket. The coat — shot here on Michèle by British photogra- pher Platon – is a relatively subtle intervention by Rick into the world of Moncler, but it’s no less impactful for it. Featuring “architecturally quilted shoulders that I intro- duced in my men's AW21 collection called Gethse- mane,” he explains, along with gauntlet-like sleeve details, it exemplifies the idiosyncratic, architectural and unabashedly camp design sensibility that has made Rick one of fashion’s most influential forces. Here, to commemorate the jack- et’s launch, Rick discusses its design process, rally- ing against banal “airport aesthetics”,collaborations as “gossip”, and the respon- sibility he feels to keep push- ing social norms. Well, I think the first time must have been in Italy, I don't remember it happening in the States. But even in the States, that kind of jacket still held a lot of alert for me. I grew in the San Joaquin Valley in California, which was very drab. But when I went to high school there was this special bus that had to go up to Camp Nelson, which was up in the mountains nearby. It would pick up the kids that lived up there and bring them down to our school, and they were these supernatural, beautiful, fit, long-haired kids that wore down jackets because they were skiing all the time. They were kind of like these mythological creatures — so beautiful and otherworldly. And so puffer jackets have always had this kind of allure for me. They've always symbolised this kind of pot-smoking, skiing, elevated hippie ethos that was cool, unperturbable and otherworldly. When I came to Europe and saw people in their Moncler jackets, that was my immediate personal association. I've always had puffer jackets in my collections, but aligning myself with Moncler was something I actually resisted for a while. In fact, there were years when I would never do collaborations. They're actually fairly new for me. I was so independ- ent and isolated, in a way, from the regular fashion industry, that I wasn't really sure what my identity was in the fashion world. I felt like I didn't want to muddy my identity by collaborating -- I felt like I needed to first establish what I stood for and what I did, and I didn't want it to dilute it. I also just had extreme scepticism regarding any kind of collabs. They often just seem like publicity stunts, and can even feel a bit desperate. That was a world I just wasn't into, a world of hyperbole. But a few years after that, I realised that I had established an identity, and I'd reached a new comfort level with my production and with the way I presented my runway shows — I started playing a bit more. My first runway shows used to be very serious and very straightforward, but I then gradually loosened up and started doing looser, more extreme things. I became less threatened by the idea of having my identity perceived differently through collaborations, and I then started pursuing them avidly! I finally felt ready to come out of my corner and play a little bit. I was ready to participate in the world, to meet new people and engage in new systems. I was ready to participate, and participating in the world is a very validating expe- rience — you've engaged, you've listened and you've been listened to. So I thought that collaborating would offer me the chance to push along my little ethos, which consists of suggesting different forms of beauty that bend what I perceive as very narrow, classical, rigid standards of contemporary beauty. Or what I like to call "airport aesthetics". and partic- ipating in the world is a very validat- ing experience — you've engaged, you've listened and you've been listened to. So I thought that collab- orating would offer me the chance to push along my little ethos, which consists of suggesting different forms of beauty that bend what I perceive as very narrow, classical, rigid stand- ards of contemporary beauty. Or what I like to call "airport aesthet- ics". Well, because when you're in an "Who's doing it like us?"