Rick Owens on the peace he finds at his home in Venice

I’ve been living in Venice, or I’ve been going to Venice for the past 20 years I guess and I always would stay at the Excelsior hotel. It’s on the Lido, and the Lido is not Venice It’s 15 minutes away from Venice, so it’s a separate island from Venice, but it’s actually the barrier between Venice and the sea. So the Lido, actually one side of it, that beach is on the sea itself, where Venice never touches the sea. So that’s why the Lido has a beach, and Venice doesn’t. I’ve been going there because I love Venice, but Venice is too dense for me. And the Lido is like a provincial village So I used to stay at the Excelsior, which is a 1920s hotel that is kind of this crazy Moorish fantasy, with Moorish arches, and...I wouldn’t call it run down, but it’s not… It hasn’t been spectacularly updated. So I used to stay there, and then finally I decided that I just didn’t like traveling anymore, and living in furniture that wasn’t mine. And so I went looking, and I don’t… It was a miracle that I found the top floor of a condominium a couple of blocks away. And so I took it. And it’s a 1950s condominium that is butt ugly, but, the top floor I completely redid, and so now it’s kind of this Sardinian stone, and it’s... I kind of was looking at Mussolini’s bathroom when I put it together so it’s very austere and very clinical, and very... But very beautiful. It’s very... It’s perfect for me. I have a cabana in front of the hotel that I rent all year, or for the summer, but it’s my garden because I go there every day. I go to the beach, I walk to my cabana, I set myself up, I have my books, I have my computer, I have my workspace, and my summer days are spent there working from my cabana and then walking a few meters to swim in the sea. And that is my life during the summer.