le freak, c'est chic; Rick Owens has always been a bad boy, but four years in Paris have superrefined his rebellious aesthetic.

Byline: Sarah Mower

As big and buff as he is, Rick Owens, standing in the gardens of the Palais Royal in Paris, is suddenly dwarfed. Model Jade Parfitt, coiling herself into a palely sinuous S-shape beside him, measures a full six-foot-four in Owens's signature biker-cum-stiletto ankle boots. Poised midway between striking elegance and something a speck alarming, she's doing a good personification of the creature Owens constantly carries in his head when he designs. "There's a goddess side to it," he says, "but it's not enough to idolize a goddess. These are realistic clothes-for women with an antiestablishment streak somewhere."

But what's that extraordinary vest with the softly curving 3-D front Jade's wearing? "Oh, that's viper," Owens murmurs. Of course! With Rick Owens, that couldn't be any old snake: It would have to be something that sounds dangerous-the sort of serpent that might turn up as part of a heavy-metal stage act.

Except, of course, that the final effect is hardly mosh pit. By now, in his fourth year in France, Owens's work is touching the upper end of luxurious sophistication. "I think it's an influence of Paris, which is the capital of high artifice. Back in L.A., everything was superteeny," says the 44-year-old designer, who grew up near Bakersfield, California. "I was working on my own in L.A., delivering my own things to stores in my own trucks. I wasn't that ambitious. But here"-he shrugs at the monumental beauty of the surroundings as he trudges back to his office in the Place du Palais Bourbon-"it's a long way from Porterville. I find myself having a tantrum if a ribbon is half or three-quarters of an inch instead of three-eighths. I hate myself when I'm snippy." A sigh. "But then I think, No, I'm supposed to do that."

To amp up his spring collection, Owens spent the whole sweltering summer perfecting toiles and finishes in the factory in Concordia, Italy, with his seventeen-years-older French girlfriend, muse, and business defender, Michele Lamy. The two of them-he with his muscles and black rod-straight locks, she with her henna, gold teeth, and tattoos-were a sight to terrorize any provincial village. "You can hear forks drop when Michele walks into the hotel cafeteria," Owens says, chuckling serenely. Still, it worked out nicely. For all his scary appearance, Owens is a soft-spoken, calm kind of guy people warm to-while Michele, he says fondly, "is a witch. She watches my back." And so, after months of coaxing cutters and sewers, Owens emerged with something that looked like a distinct elevation of his mangy, Munsters-ish, pockmarked vibe. Here were deftly sculpted pieces in organza, gazar, and eyelet; graceful jackets, dresses, and skirts wrapped and pin-tucked into all manner of traily asymmetries. It still looked like Rick, but it was his best show yet.

When he arrived from California with Michele "and three bags" in 2001, the plan was to transplant his ten-year-old business to Europe and take on the design job at the Parisian fur house Revillon. Now the tables are turned: Rick liked Revillon so much, he bought the license (and now turns out collections under that label, as well as the Rick Owens line itself). For fall, he applied himself to bringing refinement to the raw-edged style he began with at Revillon, "mixing asymmetrical lines with some very traditional techniques in the best-

quality simple, undyed ...