Rick Owens Adri Bag – Python

The Adri is the least decorated bag this house makes, and putting a patterned skin on it is the reason this version exists. On the calf version the pattern is the shape: a plain body, a strap, a D-ring, and nothing else, so the eye has only the outline to read. Here the outline is unchanged and the surface has become the subject. Python scale runs in graduated bands across a panel, so the same piece of skin is never uniform from one end to the other, and on a bag with no seaming to interrupt it the gradation runs the full length of the body.

That combination is the point and it is not the obvious way to use an exotic skin. The obvious way is to add hardware, structure, and a frame, so the material reads as expensive. This does the opposite: it takes the house's simplest pattern and lets the skin be the only thing happening. Black, so the pattern registers as texture and shadow rather than as contrast, which is the restrained version of a material that is not usually treated with restraint.

Sizing and how it carries

A shoulder bag, worn on the shoulder or carried in the hand. It is soft rather than framed, so it takes its shape from what is in it and reads slimmer carrying little. We do not hold dimensions for it and would rather measure it for you than give you an approximate figure.

How it is worn

On the shoulder against the hip, where the length of the panel is visible and the graduation in the scale can be read end to end. With black, so nothing competes with the surface.

We wanted one bag that would answer the question of what this house does with a surface rather than with a silhouette, and this is it. It is also the version of the Adri that behaves differently in different light, which is a real argument for owning an object rather than a photograph of one.

The Adri is one of the house's continuing bag patterns, cut plain so that the material carries the piece.

Made in Italy, in black. Python skin. The Adri body is plain and unstructured, with no applied ornament.

Exotic skin is more fragile than it looks, and the thing that helps a smooth hide is the thing that damages this. Scales lift at their edges if the surface is worked against their grain, and once one has lifted it does not go back. Do not put a conventional leather conditioner or polish on it. A product formulated for grain leather works under a scale edge and raises it, which is the reverse of what the same product does on calf. Keep it out of water and away from direct heat, store it stuffed and upright rather than folded or stacked, and take it to a specialist in exotic skins rather than to a general cleaner or a shoe repairer. We would rather talk any treatment through with you than publish a schedule. Our care guidance has a section on exotic skins, and that is the one to read for this rather than the leather section.

The same pattern in a plain hide is the Adri Bag in calf leather. Larger and softer, the Balloon Bag, and with a frame to it, the Cerberus Bag. Everything we currently hold from Rick Owens is listed together.