/fa/ - Fashion

Selfridgesis a high temple to high fashion. And so despite Owens's delicacy, if anyone's likeness merits installation on its facade, then it is his. For at Paris Fashion Week, where Owens is the sole US-born designer to lead his own house, the collections he presents attract an audience more cultishly dedicated than even Chanel's. Raiments as much as garments, Owens's clothes typically tend to be black (via the occasional aside into grey or other sludgily neutral tones) and fall unconventionally from the wearer.

They are extremely well manufactured, and generate sales reported to touch $500million (£300million) a year. His drop-crotch shorts, reputedly non plus ultra leather jackets, and low-hem vests are an instantly recognised uniform favoured by those who wish to appear ceremonially unconventional, vaguely agonised, and radically tasteful. It is a crowd, I've noticed wearily at his shows, that takes itself jolly seriously and relishes the aura of monastic otherness that wearing Owens lends them. In short, they can be quite up themselves.

"It was supposed to be something that was very much about tolerance, about embracing everybody," he says, when we meet a few hours after the statue-viewing, "but we've created this thing that has a wall that kind of eliminates a lot of people, and I regret that a little bit... It's been said before that most people take my clothes more seriously than I do."