Rick Owens

In the early 1990s, with the economic crisis, the first Gulf War and the devastation caused by AIDS, fashion reflected the times. It was sombre, desperate and sometimes violent. Clothing underwent deconstruction and recycling, and fashion shows became fashion performances.

"Dismantling shame and advancing vulnerability are the two things I give fuck about."

The Life of Sean DeLear is a vibrantly multi-faceted, buoyantly propulsive documentary portrait of this irresistibly charismatic one-off — sketched in celebratory but commendably clear-eyed style by writer-director Markus Zizenbacher. There can be very few people better qualified to do justice to this particular tale. Zizenbacher befriended DeLear — born Anthony Robertson in Simi Valley, an obscure California backwater — after the latter relocated to Vienna in the early 2010s.