Where is Rick Owens in MOCA's 'Rick Owens: Furniture'? Ask Michèle Lamy

Kanye West talks with Michèle Lamy, the actual driving force behind "Rick Owens: Furniture," at the opening party for the Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition. (Rachel Murray / Getty Images for MOCA)

Paris-based designer Rick Owens is a rock star of the fashion world, with a global network of stores carrying his androgynous, punk aesthetic — think jacket toggle buttons that look like miniature weapons or clunky shoes that resemble military tanks.

Last week, however, in a chilly garage workshop that Owens set up in Hollywood, it was new furniture and sculptural works, not high-end clothing, that was being
assembled. The pieces were being readied for exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Pacific Design Center branch as part of “Rick Owens: Furniture.”

But during the frenetic whirl of exhibition preparations, Owens was nowhere on site.
Instead, it was his wife and business partner, Michèle Lamy, who hobbled around the cavernous workspace supervising production in a pair of Owens’ heavy, ski bootlike shoes with near-5-inch platform heel-slabs.

She oversaw a scene that was a textural bonanza of contrasting materials. In one corner alone: a silky-smooth alabaster bench, a totem nearly 9 feet high and wrapped in fuzzy camel hair, delicate ox-bone benches, chocolate-colored camelskin ottomans and a cast aluminum obelisk. Nearby, craftsmen slathered wet cement over one of Owens’ prong-shaped chairs, as if icing a giant cake.