Michèle Lamy: Difference between revisions

Line 27: Line 27:

== Career ==

In 1979, Lamy moved to [[New York City]]. wShe made plastic jewelry and lived in the [[Hotel Chelsea|Chelsea Hotel]] during its punk heyday.<ref name=la90/> Looking for something new, upon the urging of her brother, she settled in [[Los Angeles]], where she continued to strip<ref name=i-d/> and eventually set up a fashion line, a retail store in the [[Beverly Center]], and ran two cult restaurants/nightclubs – Café des Artistes and Les Deux Cafés in 1996 with her first husband, [[Experimental film|experimental filmmaker]] Richard Newton.<ref>{{cite web|title=Les Deux Cafes’Inside Story|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-apr-26-tm-43032-story.html|website=[[Los Angeles Times]]|first=S. Irene|last=Virbilla|date=26 April 1998}}</ref><ref name=la90>{{cite web|title=FASHION : Michele Lamy Somehow Knits It All Together|first=Gayle| last=Robinson|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-16-vw-240-story.html|website=[[Los Angeles Times]]|date=16 May 1990}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=How to Live Beautifully With Michele Lamy|url=https://www.dazeddigital.com/beauty~~/soul~~/article/42034/1/how-to-live-beautifully-with-michele-lamy|website=Dazed Digital|date=26 November 2018}}</ref>~~{{dead link|date=February 2026}}~~ They lived in [[Hancock Park, Los Angeles|Hancock Park]] with their daughter, Scarlett Rouge. Lamy also produced Richard’s first film.<ref name=la90/>

In 1979, Lamy moved to [[New York City]]. wShe made plastic jewelry and lived in the [[Hotel Chelsea|Chelsea Hotel]] during its punk heyday.<ref name=la90/> Looking for something new, upon the urging of her brother, she settled in [[Los Angeles]], where she continued to strip<ref name=i-d/> and eventually set up a fashion line, a retail store in the [[Beverly Center]], and ran two cult restaurants/nightclubs – Café des Artistes and Les Deux Cafés in 1996 with her first husband, [[Experimental film|experimental filmmaker]] Richard Newton.<ref>{{cite web|title=Les Deux Cafes’Inside Story|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-apr-26-tm-43032-story.html|website=[[Los Angeles Times]]|first=S. Irene|last=Virbilla|date=26 April 1998}}</ref><ref name=la90>{{cite web|title=FASHION : Michele Lamy Somehow Knits It All Together|first=Gayle| last=Robinson|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-16-vw-240-story.html|website=[[Los Angeles Times]]|date=16 May 1990}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=How to Live Beautifully With Michele Lamy|url=https://www.dazeddigital.com/beauty/article/42034/1/how-to-live-beautifully-with-michele-lamy|website=Dazed Digital|date=26 November 2018}}</ref> They lived in [[Hancock Park, Los Angeles|Hancock Park]] with their daughter, Scarlett Rouge. Lamy also produced Richard’s first film.<ref name=la90/>

In 1984, Lamy created her own clothing line called ”Lamy” that became popular and was carried by luxury stores like [[I. Magnin]].<ref name=la90/> She hired [[Rick Owens]] in 1990 as a pattern cutter. When it became clear how much of a talent he was he became her business partner and eventually her companion and husband. In 2001, Lamy and Owens left Los Angeles to settle in Paris and got married in 2006.<ref name=i-d>{{cite web|title=open-hearted (and underwater) with michèle lamy|url=https://i-d.co/article/open-hearted-and-underwater-with-michele-lamy/|website=[[i-D]]|first=Gloria|last=Maria Cappelletti|date=21 November 2018}}</ref><ref name=Interview>{{Cite web|url=https://interviewmagazine.com/fashion/michele-lamy-1|title=MichÃ¨le Lamy|date=8 December 2015|website=Interview Magazine|language=en-US|access-date=17 December 2019}}</ref> In 2004, the couple established their own fashion company Owenscorp, describing their business partnership as “asking a gypsy to organise a war with a fascist.”<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/intelligence/constructing-rick-owens-creative-bubble|title=Constructing Rick Owens’ Creative Bubble|first=Christopher|last=Wallace|publisher=Business Of Fashion|date=30 April 2014|access-date=18 August 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Five Reasons Why Michèle Lamy Is The Coolest Sexagenerian Ever|url=https://stylecaster.com/michele-lamy-cool-moments/|website=Style Caster|first=Cady|last=Lang|date=26 January 2016}}</ref>

Line 42: Line 42:

In 2017, Lamy and Rick Owens were featured in [[SHOWstudio]]’s editor-at-large and a freelance writer and curator Lou Stoppard’s book about fashion’s important and iconic duos, ”Fashion Together: Fashion’s Most Extraordinary Duos on the Art of Collaboration”.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9780847848805/|title=Fashion & Beauty Fashion Together: Fashion’s Most Extraordinary Duos on the Art of Collaboration|website=Rizzoli USA}}</ref> In the book, Owens said that Lamy was more his “mate” than “[[Muses|muse]].” And, “I don’t think anyone would ever think of Michèle as a passive muse. I think that’s why she sparks people’s interest—because she doesn’t fit the typical role of a muse.”<ref>{{cite web|title=Rick Owens and Michèle Lamy Discuss Collaboration & Their Relationship|url=https://hypebeast.com/2017/10/rick-owens-michele-lamy-interview-fashion-together-rizzoli|website=Hypebeast|last=Stanley|first=Jack|date=5 October 2017}}</ref> That year the furniture line she produces for Owens was shown at [[Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles]].<ref name=nyt/>

Lamy has practiced contactless [[boxing]]<ref name=”highsnobiety1″/> for 35 years.<ref name=i-d/> In 2018, she set up her own boxing gym “Lamyland” in [[Selfridges flagship store|Selfridges, London]]. The space previously was home to A$AP Rocky’s AWGE Bodega. It is now reinvented every few months.<ref>{{cite web|title=Michele Lamy is setting up her own boxing gym in Selfridges|url=https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/38509/1/michele-lamy-setting-up-own-boxing-gym-in-selfridges-lamyland-rick-owens-nike|website=Dazed Digital|date=4 January 2018}}</ref> In October 2018, Lamy curated a performance series featuring a tour of “Outsider Art Fair Paris” by British [[performance artist]] [[David Hoyle (performance artist)|David Hoyle]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Michèle Lamy resurrects the zine in the name of outsider art|url=http://www.documentjournal.com/2018/10/michele-lamy-resurrects-the-zine-in-the-name-of-outsider-art/|website=Document Journal|last=Sayej|first=Nadja|date=23 October 2018}}</ref>

In January 2019, Lamy held an [[installation art|installation piece]] ”Genius You” in collaboration with Dutch photographer Paul Kooiker, taking place all around Selfridges, London.<ref>{{cite web|title=Michele Lamy wants to cast you in her new project|url=https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/42848/1/michele-lamy-selfridges-london-paul-kooiker-rick-owens-photography-art-project|website=Dazed Digital|last=Diallo|first=Habi|date=10 January 2019|access-date=12 March 2019}}</ref> From May to November 2019, her boxing installation: ”What Are We Fighting For?,” was shown in [[Venice Biennale]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Artist Michèle Lamy’s Boxing Installation Packs A Visual Punch In Venice|url=https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/michele-lamy-venice-biennale-2019|website=[[Vogue (magazine)|Vogue UK]]|first=Radhika|last=Seth|date=8 May 2019|access-date=10 May 2019}}</ref> During November, Lamy participated in [[Performa (performance festival)|Performa 19]] where she presented ”Before We Die”<ref>{{Cite web |last=AnOther |title=Before we die by Cecilia Bengolea and Michèle Lamy |url=https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/gallery/10838/before-we-die-by-cecilia-bengolea-and-michele-lamy/10 |access-date=2025-03-25 |website=AnOther |language=en}}</ref> created with Argentinian choreographer, dancer, and artist [[Cecilia Bengolea]].

French culture and fashion figure (born 1944)

Michèle Lamy
Lamy at Paris Fashion Week 2019
Born	(1944-04-20) April 20, 1944 (age 81)
Occupations
Years active	1990–present
Spouses	Richard Newton (m. 1990; div. 2003)
Children	1

Michèle Lamy (born April 20, 1944) is a French cultural and fashion figure and an entrepreneur. She has been a clothing designer, performer, restauranteur, lawyer, and film producer. She is the co-founding partner of Owenscorp and functions as the Executive Manager Art/Furniture.^[1]^[2] Lamy has been photographed by Steven Klein, Mario Sorrenti,^[3] and other famous fashion photographers.

Early life and education

[edit]

Lamy was born in 1944 and raised in Jura, the Alps, France.^[3] Her grandfather made accessories for one of France’s most famous couturiers, Paul Poiret;^[4]^[5] her family owns an eyewear company. As a teen in France, Lamy performed as a stripper at county fairs.^[6]

She went to law school, and during the ’60s and ’70s, worked as a criminal defense lawyer, while studying with the postmodern philosopher Gilles Deleuze.^[7]^[8] Lamy left the profession when she found herself interested in her defendants than with the lawyers practicing in the French legal system.^[6]

In 1979, Lamy moved to New York City. wShe made plastic jewelry and lived in the Chelsea Hotel during its punk heyday.^[6] Looking for something new, upon the urging of her brother, she settled in Los Angeles, where she continued to strip^[9] and eventually set up a fashion line, a retail store in the Beverly Center, and ran two cult restaurants/nightclubs – Café des Artistes and Les Deux Cafés in 1996 with her first husband, experimental filmmaker Richard Newton.^[10]^[6]^[11] They lived in Hancock Park with their daughter, Scarlett Rouge. Lamy also produced Richard’s first film.^[6]

In 1984, Lamy created her own clothing line called Lamy that became popular and was carried by luxury stores like I. Magnin.^[6] She hired Rick Owens in 1990 as a pattern cutter. When it became clear how much of a talent he was he became her business partner and eventually her companion and husband. In 2001, Lamy and Owens left Los Angeles to settle in Paris and got married in 2006.^[9]^[3] In 2004, the couple established their own fashion company Owenscorp, describing their business partnership as “asking a gypsy to organise a war with a fascist.”^[12]^[13]

Lamy produces the furniture that bears the Owens brand. She also designs jewelry with American jewelry designer Loree Rodkin, whom she met in Los Angeles when she ran an eyewear store and Rodkin was a Hollywood agent.^[14] Lamy has appeared in FKA twigs and Black Asteroid music videos.^[4]^[15] She formed the band Lavascar with the artist Nico Vascellari and her daughter from her first marriage, Scarlett Rouge.^[16]

In November 2010, Lamy posed for a shoot for Vogue Paris with the photographer Steven Klein.^[17]^[18] In 2013, Lamy was featured in Forbes with her daughter, now artist Scarlett Rouge.^[19] That year she reopened Café des Artistes in an art complex in Venice.^[20]

In 2015, Lamy was featured in a segment of FKA Twigs‘s short film for her EP M3LL155X after the English singer-songwriter asked to meet with her.^[21] Lamy appeared in the first section Figure 8, in jewelry,^[3] wearing a headpiece with a luminous bulb imitating an anglerfish.^[22]

At the 2015 Venice Biennale, Lamy transformed an old container ship into a floating saloon. There she recorded songs with British electronica band Unkle and good friend A$AP Rocky, while on topside she, editors, and artists dined within various installations, talking.^[3] Rocky said about Lamy, “Hardly anyone knows how important you have been behind the scenes for my career. You did not just design my album covers, you took me to art fairs and showed me the art world.”^[23]

In 2017, Lamy and Rick Owens were featured in SHOWstudio’s editor-at-large and a freelance writer and curator Lou Stoppard’s book about fashion’s important and iconic duos, Fashion Together: Fashion’s Most Extraordinary Duos on the Art of Collaboration.^[24] In the book, Owens said that Lamy was more his “mate” than “muse.” And, “I don’t think anyone would ever think of Michèle as a passive muse. I think that’s why she sparks people’s interest—because she doesn’t fit the typical role of a muse.”^[25] That year the furniture line she produces for Owens was shown at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.^[26]

Lamy has practiced contactless boxing^[2] for 35 years.^[9] In 2018, she set up her own boxing gym “Lamyland” in Selfridges, London. The space previously was home to A$AP Rocky’s AWGE Bodega. It is now reinvented every few months.^[27] In October 2018, Lamy curated a performance series featuring a tour of “Outsider Art Fair Paris” by British performance artist David Hoyle.^[28] In November she was a beauty centerfold for Dazed Digital.^[11]

In January 2019, Lamy held an installation piece Genius You in collaboration with Dutch photographer Paul Kooiker, taking place all around Selfridges, London.^[29] From May to November 2019, her boxing installation: What Are We Fighting For?, was shown in Venice Biennale.^[30] During November, Lamy participated in Performa 19 where she presented Before We Die^[31] created with Argentinian choreographer, dancer, and artist Cecilia Bengolea.

Lamy said about her approach to fashion and design:

“I like to really be with a lot of people and exchange ideas and the best way to be is to do something together, so I’m easily seduced… And when it’s the idea or I want to lead a bunch of people somewhere and do something together, I think that’s generous.”^[32]

In 2020, Lamy collaborated with director Katya Bankowsky for Battle Royale, a series of short films that feature Bankowsky and Lamy preparing for a fight.^[33]

Lamy has one daughter, artist Scarlett Rouge.^[3] She is married to fashion designer Rick Owens, who is bisexual.^[26] Lamy is a smoker^[3] and is known for her gold teeth and ringed and Berber-inspired tattooed fingers dipped in black paint.^[14]^[26] Lamy collects the work of Barry X Ball, Arthur Jafa, and Joel-Peter Witkin.

In a joint interview with Forbes in 2013, Scarlett said of her mother,

“There is a reason Michele’s not fully an artist. She doesn’t wanna go and sit in her pain. She doesn’t want to suffer. She doesn’t want to be vulnerable…. She’s done so many different things. She didn’t let anything get her down or stop her from moving on with life. To me, that’s really inspiring.^[8]“

When asked in this interview what she has for breakfast, lamy answered, “black tea and cigarettes.”^[34]

^ Fisher, Alice (11 February 2018). “Michèle Lamy, the style queen who packs a punch”. the Guardian. Retrieved 16 October 2018.
^ ^a ^b “Michèle Lamy: Inside The Modern Polymath’s Extraordinary Universe”. Highsnobiety. 16 October 2018. Retrieved 16 October 2018.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g “MichÃ¨le Lamy”. Interview Magazine. 8 December 2015. Retrieved 17 December 2019.
^ ^a ^b Rabkin, Eugene (9 October 2018). “Inside the Extraordinary Universe of Michèle Lamy”. Highsnobiety.
^ Kaprièlian, Nelly (18 August 2014). “Les égéries de la mode : Michèle Lamy, muse du créateur Rick Owens”. Les Inrockuptibles (in French).
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Robinson, Gayle (16 May 1990). “FASHION : Michele Lamy Somehow Knits It All Together”. Los Angeles Times.
^ Fisher, Alice (11 February 2018). “Michèle Lamy, the style queen who packs a punch”. The Guardian.
^ ^a ^b https://www.forbes.com/sites/hannahelliott/2013/12/18/at-home-with-michele-lamy-the-woman-behind-rick-owens/#65a7a65a2267
^ ^a ^b ^c Maria Cappelletti, Gloria (21 November 2018). “open-hearted (and underwater) with michèle lamy”. i-D.
^ Virbilla, S. Irene (26 April 1998). “Les Deux Cafes’Inside Story”. Los Angeles Times.
^ ^a ^b “How to Live Beautifully With Michele Lamy”. Dazed Digital. 26 November 2018.
^ Wallace, Christopher (30 April 2014). “Constructing Rick Owens’ Creative Bubble”. Business Of Fashion. Retrieved 18 August 2019.
^ Lang, Cady (26 January 2016). “Five Reasons Why Michèle Lamy Is The Coolest Sexagenerian Ever”. Style Caster.
^ ^a ^b “The Genesis of Hunrod”. Interview. 22 May 2015.
^ Osei, Sarah (3 May 2019). “PEOPLE: MICHÈLE LAMY”. Interview Germany. Retrieved 10 May 2019.
^ “Michèle Lamy Profile: Rick Owens’ Greatest Muse Casts a Fabulous Spell”. www.lofficielusa.com. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
^ “Nils Butle and Michele Lamy for Vogue”. F.Y!. 12 November 2010.
^ “Michèle Lamy: è lei la musa ispiratrice di Rick Owens”. MAM-e (in French). 12 November 2010.
^ Elliot, Hannah (18 December 2013). “At Home With Michele Lamy: The Woman Behind Rick Owens”. Forbes.
^ https://wwd.com/eye/lifestyle/les-deux-cafe-part-two-6694700/
^ “Michele Lamy spills on working with FKA twigs”. Dazed Digital. 13 November 2015.
^ Hyland, Veronique (10 November 2015). “The Jeweler With a Shaman Dentist and a Boxing Habit”. The Cut.
^ Fentloh, Fray (18 September 2018). “MICHÈLE LAMY AND ASAP ROCKY”. Interview Germany (in German).
^ “Fashion & Beauty Fashion Together: Fashion’s Most Extraordinary Duos on the Art of Collaboration”. Rizzoli USA.
^ Stanley, Jack (5 October 2017). “Rick Owens and Michèle Lamy Discuss Collaboration & Their Relationship”. Hypebeast.
^ ^a ^b ^c Fury, Alexander (2 March 2017). “The Lighter Side of Rick Owens”. The New York Times.
^ “Michele Lamy is setting up her own boxing gym in Selfridges”. Dazed Digital. 4 January 2018.
^ Sayej, Nadja (23 October 2018). “Michèle Lamy resurrects the zine in the name of outsider art”. Document Journal.
^ Diallo, Habi (10 January 2019). “Michele Lamy wants to cast you in her new project”. Dazed Digital. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
^ Seth, Radhika (8 May 2019). “Artist Michèle Lamy’s Boxing Installation Packs A Visual Punch In Venice”. Vogue UK. Retrieved 10 May 2019.
^ AnOther. “Before we die by Cecilia Bengolea and Michèle Lamy”. AnOther. Retrieved 25 March 2025.
^ HB Team (31 January 2019). “Michele Lamy wants to cast you in her new project”. Hypebeast. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
^ Rossen, Miss (4 December 2019). “Katya Bankowsky and Michèle Lamy wage a boxing ‘Battle Royale’ in the Bronx”. Document Journal. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
^ “Meet the Collectors Michèle Lamy”. Art Basel via YouTube. 6 September 2021.

Early life and education

Must Read

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply