Savage 'Vogue' Reporter Gives Rick Owens an Underwhelming Review to His Face

Rick Owens has awkward moment with 'Vogue' reporter who wasn't too impressed by the designer's show.

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Complex Original

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Vogue reporter Luke Leitch was gifted almost eight minutes backstage with the gawd Rick Owens after the designer's spring/summer 2017 show in Paris Thursday. 

The Facebook Live session got off to an extremely awkward and unceremonious start after Leitch decided to hit Dick Ovens with some honesty when the designer asked him to rank the collection on a scale of one to ten. "I think, never use a 10 or a 1, because if there's no improvement than the whole job and mission of creativity is over, isn't it?" Leitch said as a preface to his answer. "I'm going to give you a 7.5. Don't beat me up," he concluded, and seemed to instantly regretted his words. 

Owens handled this more or less like a champ. He told Leitch he was going to convince him he was deserving of a higher score before the interview was over. "I'm insisting on an eight," he said. Leitch held strong and doubled down on his review saying maybe he would "bestow" Owens with an improved grade before his time was up. 

First: Wow. You're given an interview with Owens and the first thing you want to do is be brutally honest about the strength of his collection, the one he just showed for the first time, right to his face. That takes balls we honestly didn't know Vogue had. So, kudos for that, we suppose? Second, although, yes, Leitch was sort of goaded into this, everyone knows an interview is really not the place to be reviewing collections with the harsh judgment of Simon Cowell. You save the harsh critiques for your website, preferably when the designers are many miles and time zones away, Vogue. Even better if they're sleeping at the time.

Despite the hitch, the rest of the interview went smoothly enough. You can watch Owens talk about the inspiration behind the show ("evolution") and get a little New-Age-y in the clip here.

 

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