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The fashion designer Rick Owens cuts a striking figure. He’s always dressed in his own clothes — which at times have included floor-sweeping coats and boots with five-inch heels. His standard day-to-day outfit includes his signature prehistoric-looking sneakers with odd, angular rubber panels for soles, while the rest of the leg is encased in a tight elastic leather sock, meeting at the knee with droopy-drawer shorts.

Yet the most striking thing about Owens is his hair — which is long, jet-black and ramrod-straight. As Owens allows, it’s a triumph of man against nature: his hair is naturally curly and white. But its become a ritual to dye his own hair at home — an intimate practice that he’s never allowed to be filmed before. In a bathroom (which is covered entirely in dark-veined marble) in the Paris building that houses both his professional headquarters and his private residence, Owens touches up his hair (and eyebrows) with Japanese Bigen hair dye.

The straightening, however, is a little more intense. Four times a year, Owens indulges in a three-hour Japanese chemical straightening treatment at a salon in London. “It’s like a ceremonial trip,” he once told the European gay-interest magazine Butt. His goal from childhood was apparently to have hair like Cher. It seems he’s finally achieved his dream.