OWENS: You have to come. I’ll make sure that somebody picks you up. I do love shows now. I realize that it doesn’t even have to be about clothes anymore. Especially women’s runway, because the way that women’s runway clothes get in the store … You know, there’s this whole conversation about what they call a show now.

WALLACE: Like what Tom Ford is doing? Timing the show to the collection’s release in stores—making it shoppable, basically?

OWENS: Right. Shop it off the runway. I am sure that there is something logical there, but I wonder if there’s an alternative to that, because there is something about being too desperate to please. I think this is a fast-fashion thing that H&M and all of those people already kind of rule, and they do it so wonderfully. I don’t know if we need to compete with that. Maybe we need to become even slower and less available, which is kind of ironic coming from me, selling stuff all over the internet. It sounds a little hypocritical coming from me, but I don’t know if I want stuff to be accessible right away, because then that makes it just too disposable.

WALLACE: I think that both of you have created these places that, whether by luxury or by sort of avant-garde-ness, exist outside of what the rest of the world is doing and draw people to them. Claude, did you feel like you were avant-garde? Did you feel like you were in a special realm?

MONTANA: I never thought that about my own work, no. But other people probably thought that about me.

OWENS: Yeah. I am not really engaged in the fashion world where advertising and a lot of editorial is essential. I suppose I could have engaged more personally, but I just never did. It kind of worked out for the best because any kind of success doesn’t really hinge on me being that visible. Like, I don’t have to actually be there when a store opens. I don’t have to present my collections to editors and buyers and explain it to anybody, so that’s kind of great. It either engages you or it doesn’t. There’s nothing I can argue that is going to convince anybody even more.

WALLACE: Well, that breeds a very passionate following. I don’t think that people sip Rick Owens—do you know what I mean?

OWENS: I think when you create a niche like that, it becomes so specific that people identify with it. People who like it, really like it, and people who don’t like it, really hate it. It’s polarizing in that way.

MONTANA: I don’t need somebody to like it. If they don’t like it, that’s all.

OWENS: Yeah, and that’s great, because it makes you very special to some people. It’s kind of like making yourself indispensable. If you really focus and apply yourself, you create something that’s … Did I just call myself indispensable? That’s kind of what I wanted to do.