{"id":903196,"date":"2026-05-03T04:29:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T09:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/03\/michele-lamy-fashion-iconoclast-on-striptease-artificial-intelligence-rick-owens-and-zohran-mamdani\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T04:29:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T09:29:13","slug":"michele-lamy-fashion-iconoclast-on-striptease-artificial-intelligence-rick-owens-and-zohran-mamdani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/03\/michele-lamy-fashion-iconoclast-on-striptease-artificial-intelligence-rick-owens-and-zohran-mamdani\/","title":{"rendered":"Mich\u00e8le Lamy, Fashion Iconoclast, on Striptease, Artificial Intelligence, Rick Owens, and Zohran Mamdani"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cI fell in a hole, sometimes I\u2019m big, sometimes I\u2019m tall,\u201d says Mich\u00e8le Lamy<\/a>, who is comparing herself to Alice from Alice in Wonderland<\/em>. The multi-hyphenate, who is known for her work in fashion and most notably as the co-founder of Owenscorp alongside her husband, Rick Owens<\/a>, is calling in from a conference room in Los Angeles. She received a lifetime achievement award at the Fashion Trust US\u2019s fourth annual awards ceremony on Tuesday, and called me before the ceremony to discuss the lifetime in question.<\/p>\n

Lamy has been called a witch and an occultist on TikTok. She has been described as a fashion icon, and labeled an entrepreneur and fashion designer. She has practiced both law and striptease with equal fervor. She protested Vietnam while living in the US and was living in France during May 68. She has designed furniture for Kim Kardashian<\/a> and a backstage lounge for Travis Scott<\/a>\u2019s Circus Maximus world tour. And yet, despite having experienced enough for a hefty memoir or a blockbuster biopic, she is the kind of person who likes to focus on the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually, I look forward,\u201d she says, \u201cbut now back, because of [this] life<\/em> achievement award.\u201d Lamy says she is \u201cvery pleased\u201d with the recognition. \u201cBut at the same time, I never have a feeling that I made an achievement,\u201d says, though she appreciates the airtime and opportunity to make her voice heard.<\/p>\n

\u201cLately, I understand a little more what is my function in life,\u201d says Lamy, who speaks poetically and with a thick French accent. \u201cIt starts from whatever my way of thinking or being became at the time when I was in university.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, Lamy was studying law in Lyon, where she became drawn to the work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. \u201cI was supposed to be at the law school next door,\u201d she recalls. Deleuze was working on his famed analysis of Alice in Wonderland<\/em> at the time, \u201cfor which he did a book afterwards, The Logic of Sense<\/em>,\u201d Lamy says. \u201cI think it\u2019s a great example of what I\u2019m doing, I\u2019m very like Alice. It started from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Travis Scott and Mich\u00e8le Lamy<\/p>\n

<\/span>Photography by Louis Nesbitt<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Erykah Badu, Mich\u00e8le Lamy, and Travis Scott<\/p>\n

<\/span>Photography by Louis Nesbitt<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Lamy worked as a criminal attorney in the late \u201960s and early \u201970s. \u201cAt the time it was to save the world,\u201d she says, \u201ctrying to defend people.\u201d \u201cAt the same time, I [also] wanted to do striptease,\u201d she laughs\u2014Lamy did strip at French county fairs when she was young, and continued to do so when she eventually relocated to the states, after her stint in law.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I was very afraid I wouldn\u2019t be very useful,\u201d as a lawyer, she says. But she was. \u201cAt the beginning, you get a lot of cases of people who give it to you,\u201d Lamy says. \u201cFor some reason, they were thinking they\u2019d embarrass me, so they were giving me these sex stories,\u201d she says, referring to sex crimes. \u201cOf course, they were not as big as the Epstein files, but they showed you the misery of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, May 68, the period of uprising and civil unrest in France, comes to her mind. \u201cWe were thinking we already changed the word,\u201d she tells me. Then she came to New York, and then relocated to Los Angeles. \u201cWe were already in the streets,\u201d she says of protesting the Vietnam war.<\/p>\n

Lamy conjures up these moments in her life to make a broader point about culture at large today. Then, the idea was, she suggests, to rise up against threats to the world as they then knew it. If it seemed like it had worked, Lamy thinks we got it all wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big problem right now [that] we see is the opposite of what we thought was going to change,\u201d Lamy says, when some leaders are in \u201ctotal dementia\u201d and \u201cnothing can be done about it.\u201d \u201cWhat I think,\u201d she says more forcefully, \u201cis what on Earth did we do not to be thinking, 40 or 30 years ago or yesterday, that something like that would happen at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThose visions of the astronauts,\u201d she says, referring to Artemis II and the photos of our planet they shared, \u201cwere absolutely incredible, but you could see [against] the pictures of Earth in \u201972 from Apollo [17], the Earth is now, grayer,\u201d she says. \u201cI mean, wake up. It\u2019s crazy. It\u2019s in front of everybody\u2019s eyes, and then there\u2019s [some] trying to kill populations for oil. It\u2019s very disturbing,\u201d she says. \u201cA life achievement award\u2026 you always think that your voice, or what you do, you express it and it\u2019s going in the right direction, but right now it\u2019s a failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet Lamy is still hopeful. \u201cBut I can never give up,\u201d she says. \u201cThere are people who have been fighting all the time, and we are expressing ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only at the tail end of our conversation does fashion come up as a topic. I ask her what she makes of the way the industry has changed. She first mentions Owens\u2019s shows and Rei Kawakubo\u2019s for Comme des Gar\u00e7ons as good examples of self-expression in fashion. Then, she makes something clear: \u201cI don\u2019t like to hear the words brand or industry,\u201d she says, \u201cbut I think doing things that you express yourself and do something of the time, is resistance. It\u2019s the way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Mich\u00e8le Lamy walks the runway at the fall-winter 2026 Mati\u00e8res F\u00e9cales show in Paris in March, 2026.<\/p>\n

<\/span>WWD\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

She then speaks about the youth. \u201cWe have our new kids, Mati\u00e8res F\u00e9cales<\/a>,\u201d she says, who are part of the Owens and Lamy extended creative family. \u201cWhen we are storytellers, the artist, the poet, the writer, we are the resistance,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Does Lamy think the world can still be saved? \u201cIt\u2019s not with more guns, or AI,\u201d she says. I ask her further about AI. \u201cYeah, we got fucked up,\u201d she offers matter of factly. We laugh, as do the people off-camera in the room. She then brings up New York, which she says is \u201cbetter looking\u201d than Paris always, but more so now. \u201cNow, with [Zohran] Mamdani<\/a>, there is hope,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Scott and Erykah Badu<\/a> presented Lamy with her award on Tuesday evening. \u201cWe really want to change the world,\u201d she said onstage. \u201cWe don\u2019t know what we can do. But we will, we will.\u201d She then introduced Scott and Badu herself, rather than the other way around, and asked the crowd to join her as she chanted: \u201cresistance, resistance.\u201d After Scott handed her the award, she asked Badu for a kiss. \u201cShe is the poster child for open heart, for exceptional freedom, for resistance, for non conformity,\u201d Badu said. \u201cYou are an inspiration to us all, an example of what freedom looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n

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