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Guest Blog by Boswell Hardwick: Michele Lamy – the Queen of Glunge (Glamour + Grunge)

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Photographer Boswell Hardwick takes over the StyleTease blog to write about his time with the eccentric Michele Lamy, wife of designer Rick Owens, in Paris, where they talked about music, and…Detroit.

It was my last day in Paris for the fall 2012 shows. My friend Barbara Mariani (a former Detroiter), who is the managing partner at Rick Owens there, arranged an interview with Michele Lamy. She has been a successful clothing designer, performer, film producer and restaurateur. In recent years, Lamy has worked as creative collaborator and muse with her husband, fashion superstar Rick Owens. Barbara greeted me at their home on Place du Palais Bourbon. It’s the former residence of President Mitterrand, and part of it transforms into a showroom for buyers during fashion week. Michele descended the stairs like a tribal ballerina. We had met on a few occasions, but this time we had a cup of tea and a nice chat.

B – I hear you like Detroit … or the idea of Detroit?

M – I love the idea of Detroit. I thought I would be going there soon because I met the DJ Omar S; we made him come for our club here. I love his music, he said he likes my voice, and we were supposed to do something together, so I have not been there yet. I have this book that is sort of sad of the old Detroit that was falling apart, but it is so incredibly beautiful. You know, you have to think about it and then you get there. Not only going to Detroit, but having something to do there. We can have people come there, the music scene, you know, so many stories there.

B – You are a chanteuse; tell me about your style.

M – I don’t really sing, but I talk with music. I mean, it is singing but it is more like talking. I am sort of rapping in my own way with techno music.

B – We are very proud of our techno pioneers like Derrick May.

M – You better be. It is incredible because it is not the first generation of music that Detroit has been putting on the map and starting a lot of things.

B – How do you and Rick select the music for the shows? Do you make special music for the runway?

M – Rick is making his music for the runway. I think he starts all of his collections with the music first. He has an idea of what he wants to do; he always works with someone to take existing music, squeezing it and remixing it, as you say. I am not at all in the music, except that next season we are trying to do something that he will use my voice and a poem by Langston Hughes with the music of Matthew Stone from London. But we don’t know if it is going to work. Usually I use a Langston Hughes poem; I don’t use my own words. That takes us away from Detroit but we will go back there because that is in the same vein, that I am planning to do something with Omar S.

B – Mathew Stone has done some music for Rick Owens in the past?

M – No, he has been DJing a lot for our club and doing all the music for Gareth Pugh shows. It is somebody we are sharing because we produce Gareth so this is in the family, the tribe, let’s say.

B – I know you work with old school artisans for Rick’s furniture line. We have many artists coming back into the city to work.

M – That reminds me of Berlin. You can find places for nothing compared to the rest of the cities in Europe. You have artists coming there to have a studio and live there. That’s what I like about it, it’s just there, sad and romantic, but artists can create new work coming from this history.

B – We hope to see you in our beautiful city before too long.

M – We were doing this exhibition in New York and Detroit is not so far, but it was postponed. We did Basel instead, but Detroit is in the mind and thought process, as you say.