The designer brings a taste of Alienstock 2020 to Milan Fashion Week.
Moncler’s designer collaborations have produced some of the most memorable outerwear in fashion history, consistently upending our notions of what a down jacket can be—a hooded puffer gown, a deflatable raft, and now, courtesy of Rick Owens’s unprecedented collaboration with the brand, a custom tour bus. Not a bus-inspired jacket, but a literal tour bus, complete with a brutalist, matte black paint job and all-grey, heavily insulated interior. Undoubtedly the most expensive statement piece in Moncler Genius history, despite the bus having already clocked up significant mileage. Last October, Owens and Michèle Lamy took it on a road trip from LAX to Michael Heizer’s monumental land art project in Nevada, via the controversial Area 51 military base and Roadside America icon E.T. Fresh Jerky.
“Moncler approached me about a collab and I took advantage of the moment to ask them to do something different,” Owens said in a press release today. He also seized the opportunity to visit the west coast for the first time since he moved to Europe 18 years ago. “I was kind of thinking about Joseph Beuys traveling to the US from Germany in the ’70s, landing at JFK, being wrapped in felt and taken by ambulance to this NY gallery to live with a wild coyote for three days,” Owens continued, referring to the performance artist’s groundbreaking installation I Like America and America Likes Me. Beuys’s work was a commentary on the divided state of Vietnam War-era America—a time also marked by mass hysteria around UFO sightings and conspiracy theories.
Next stop on tour is Milan’s Viale Molise, where Owens will reveal his full Moncler collaboration alongside Genius designers Simone Rocha, Craig Green, Hiroshi Fujiwara, and J.W. Anderson. The custom bus and post-apocalyptic puffer garments will all be available for preorder later this year—hopefully in time to plan your looks for Alienstock 2020.
