My very first job that I got paid for was working shifts at Taco Bell, back in Porterville, California. And you don’t want to hear about that. I was going nowhere much. My parents were worried, so my mom drove me to LA to go to art school. I dropped out. I was really intimidated by all the classes, in theory, which I now know to be bullshit. Plus, I couldn’t really afford it. Instead I did a pattern-making course at trade school. Dad had always said I should learn a skill. This got me work at a small studio called the LA Design Group. And I did that for around two years, working with this wonderful sample maker: Ricardo was gruff, a little cranky, silent and also the most exquisite sewer. Eventually I earned his respect. But this is all to preface what I’m counting as my real first job: the gig that led to what became Rick Owens. And that job was working for Michèle.

There’s a video on YouTube someone found of me on MTV at around this time, in 1988. Looking at it now, of course, I cringe. But objectively it’s an interesting time capsule. I’m incredibly cocky. And you know, I just don’t remember having that confidence — a confidence bordering on arrogance. And I don’t think I was high, although I might have had a cocktail or something. I think I was just performing, frantically performing, overcompensating for being shy. And I wonder if that’s what I was like when I first met her.

It happened through Rick Castro, the fetish photographer. One day he said to me, “I’m gonna do a menswear collection for Michèle Lamy. So do you want to cut the patterns, freelance?” I said sure. I knew of Michèle already, kind of; I would have met her in the clubs a couple of times. We moved in different circles but drag is where we would have intersected. Because Michèle had gained our respect by having a show at the Plaza, which was this drag club frequented by Mexicans, using the girls that work there. It was great. She was doing clothes that were like a California sportswear version of Zoran. They were exuberant.