Why are we still scared of Rick Owens and Michèle Lamy? How social media conspiracy theories have turned Rick Owens's grotesque, brutalist fashion into satanic deviance

Recently, some social media users have renewed their accusations against Rick Owens and Michèle Lamy, charging them with Satanism and the promotion of occult practices. Reigniting the controversy was an interview given by journalist Bliss Foster at the brand's most recent SS27 womenswear show, presented during Paris Fashion Week last October. The American designer openly responded to criticism surrounding his use of the pentagram (the five-pointed star) in his collections, describing it not as a demonic symbol but as "a flag of protection for otherness" something that has been demonized throughout human history and is still rejected and condemned by society today.

But why does the style of Rick Owens and Michèle Lamy continue to frighten people?

Rick Owens between the sacred and the profane

The accusations of Satanism leveled at the "prince of darkness" are fundamentally rooted in his avowed obsession with the sacred. Having grown up in a deeply Catholic and ultraconservative family, Owens's relationship with fashion was born precisely from his observation of liturgical vestments, monastic tunics, and religious processions. Over the course of his career, through a process of cathartic reworking of his childhood traumas, Owens has reinterpreted the codes of the sacred in his work with a dark, gothic sensibility. Examples include the collection Gethsemane (FW21), named after the sacred place where Jesus surrendered to prayer and weeping before being arrested and crucified, and the Hollywood show (SS25), in which Owens, drawing inspiration from Cecil B. DeMille's cinematic epics, staged a veritable biblical procession.

Owens has often stated that he has always been fascinated by sacred art and depictions of the martyrdom of Jesus, which he found erotically charged even as a teenager. From this complex relationship with the sacred emerges a personal spirituality that Rick Owens and Michèle Lamy have projected into a primitive and divine aesthetic universe. This is evident in the objects that decorate their home and in the architecture of the brand's stores: authentic brutalist sanctuaries featuring wooden totems and stone installations reminiscent of sacrificial altars.

The meanings of the Pentagram

The ambiguous and dark nature of the pentagram simultaneously an emblem of cosmic harmony and, in its inverted form (the pentacle), a representation of rebellion against the divine order has always exerted a powerful pull on Rick Owens, exposing him to media backlash. The most emblematic case dates back to 2021, with the scandal of the "Satanic shoes": the TurboDrk Chuck 70s, created in collaboration with Converse. The presence of an inverted pentagram in place of the brand's star, combined with a controversial campaign featuring the duo Matières Fécales, sparked protests from the most radical Catholic groups, who went so far as to call the designer a servant of the devil intent on spreading Satanic messages to young people.

In response, Owens defended his artistic vision, declaring that the use of that symbol was not a tribute to the devil but a geometric representation of adolescent rebellion. Over time, the pentagram has become a signature motif for Owens, appearing on the brand's Megalace boots as well as in the well known collaboration with Dr. Martens. The designer has often pointed out that the laces arranged in the shape of a pentagram, found in the design of these shoes, are also inspired by a 1965 performance by Joseph Beuys entitled How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, in which the artist's shoes were bound to an iron plate by a dense web of leather laces. For Owens, this geometric interweaving is a gothic symbol of aesthetic rebellion and the protection of one's individuality.

The legends surrounding Michèle Lamy

Conspiracy theories on social media have also drawn in Michèle Lamy, artist, muse, and partner of Rick Owens. The distinctive features of the designer's style have often been interpreted on social media as esoteric symbols, even though they have nothing to do with black magic or Satanism. For instance, Michèle Lamy's hands, painted with black henna and frequently mistaken for the mark of a magical initiation or even for hands stained with demonic blood, are simply the result of a habitual practice of the designer's. The look is said to draw from several sources of inspiration, from the dye she once applied to Rick Owens's hair to the paintings of Anselm Kiefer, as well as certain traditions of Berber women from North Africa, by whom Lamy herself has said she was particularly captivated.

Similarly, the dark line at the center of Lamy's forehead, often interpreted as a Satanic mark, is, according to the designer, a tribal sign she uses to keep herself grounded. Among the more bizarre urban legends circulating on social media about this marking, some have even claimed that Lamy is a centuries-old witch who preserves her youth through occult arts.

The A$AP Rocky affair

Another strand of conspiracy theorists maintains that Lamy and Owens jointly run an alleged Satanic cult whose members include stars such as Ye, Usher, and A$AP Rocky. In particular, the artistic connection with A$AP Rocky has fueled a series of conspiracy theories dating back to 2015, the year in which Rocky and Lamy began collaborating for the release of the album At. Long. Last. ASAP. The album cover itself, which showed the designer's hands merging into Rocky's face, led the internet and part of the rapper's fanbase to speculate that he had been spiritually "initiated" by Michèle Lamy.

The issue resurfaced last January during an interview on the Joe Budden Podcast. A$AP Rocky clarified that he had never witnessed any rituals or occult practices involving Lamy, reducing the whole matter to a question of pure visual provocation: "I can't justify what they do, but we're talking about 'European gays' we could never understand," the rapper said. Despite this remark  as ironic as it was homophobic social media continued to fuel the rumors.

Creator Kory Yeshua, known on YouTube for his analyses of alleged occult influences in music, fashion, and Hollywood, recently returned to the subject, accusing Michèle Lamy and Rick Owens of being Satanists and central figures in a spiritual war between good and evil in the United States. According to Yeshua, A$AP Rocky's partner Rihanna is also a member of this alleged cult. During the most recent Paris Fashion Week, the singer was frequently seen alongside Michèle Lamy  for example, seated in the front row at the Matières Fécales show. For the creator, the two designers long supported by Owens and Lamy are using their media success to spread Satanism.

The fear of otherness

The accusations and controversies directed at the two designers can be traced back to a single underlying source: our perception of bodies within society. The outrage of mainstream audiences at their aesthetic stems from their alternative appearance, but above all from the space in which we encounter them: the world of fashion, a sector governed to an extraordinary degree by conventional aesthetic standards.

Seeing the designers alongside generally attractive models and celebrities (the famous "perfect bodies" that appear on the runway or in the front row for a season or two) generates unease because it belongs to the realm of grotesque bodies to borrow a term from the Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin. Bodies in perpetual flux, with undefined silhouettes, lacking reassuring boundaries and, for that very reason, perceived as monstrous. The community of Rick Owens and Michèle Lamy that gravitates around the brand appears, in the eyes of the broader social media public, as deeply divisive, oscillating between fascination and repulsion.

To those who observe this universe from the outside, Owens's creations look more like costumes than everyday style. But if every garment transforms the anatomy of a body, Owens and Lamy take this metamorphosis to the extreme, challenging the notion of decorum that defines which bodies are socially acceptable. The difference embodied by the two designers thus becomes, now more than ever, a form of protest against those who view otherness as an error to be corrected or excluded.

Perhaps the real mistake lies in our rush to judge every image, object, or body according to the rigid categories of "right" or "wrong," "good" and "evil," without asking whether it might be possible to conceive of beauty through an alternative gaze. If for us this is a moral dilemma, for Rick Owens and Michèle Lamy it is a mission.