Rick Owens' London Furniture Exhibition 'Glade' Now Open to Public

While Thursday saw Rick Owens present his Spring/Summer 2020 Bauhaus/Mexican cinema-inspired womenswear collection, the American designer's creative endeavours don't stop there. Earlier in September, the polymath designer opened a solo exhibition entitled Glade at the Carpenters Workshop Gallery, as part of the London Design Festival. Said exhibition is now open to the public, and runs until 25 October 2019.

Glade presents a collection of new limited-edition designs and is produced by Michèle Lamy, Owens’ business partner and wife, who develops and produces the furniture collection in Paris, and has been named the primary creative force behind the show. Lamy has been instrumental in informing Owens' aesthetic and creative practice, having been his muse, business partner, creative collaborator and life partner for decades.

While Owens is beloved in fashion circles for his dark, gender-fluid designs, he has also long been active in the furniture world. Owens started making bespoke furniture for his bunker-style loft in Los Angles in 2007, and has always cited architecture as a great influence on his work. Looking to the ‘logic and brutalism’ of the likes of Corbusier, and the grandeur of religious buildings, Owens’s minimalist aesthetic carries across his fashion and his furniture. The works exhibited in Glade combine brutalist qualities like geometric shapes and clean lines, with the beauty of nature through the use of rare and subtle materials, like alabaster.

The Carpenters Workshop Gallery, known for its focus on creative expression through functional sculptures, features a display that sees the installation of a large scale couch, ten individual Glade units and two Glade corner units. Made of plywood, the units are covered in French wool army blankets, both materials being signature of Owens and an echo of the original bed made for his home. Although presented as one piece, each glade element stands strong in its own right, functional design features including individual lighting, internet conduit, and phone charger.

In collaboration with mask designer Steve Wintercrop, Owens has developed a unique method of silver and black chrome plating on eight new aztec crowns, as well as an explosion of prong stools made of aluminium, that are evocative of the headpieces seen in the S/S 20 show.

Rick Owens: Glade runs until 25 October 2019 at The Carpenters Gallery Workshop on 4 Albemarle Street W1S 4GA.

Watch our editors’ Live Review of the Rick Owens show, and check out our exclusive catwalk imagery and unique social curations of the show in our S/S 20 show detail.