Rick Owens Harness T – Fawn Rainino Jersey

This is a garment made by wrapping rather than by cutting and joining, and once you see that, the rest of it explains itself. Layers of jersey are wound around the torso and secured so that the bands cross and overlap, producing something that looks like a harness while functioning as a top. No buckle, no hardware, no fastening of any kind. The harness reading comes entirely from where the fabric goes.

Jersey is the right material for it and probably the only one. A woven cloth cannot be wrapped like this without gathering into stiff folds, because a woven has no give on the straight grain. Knitted jersey stretches in every direction, so it can be pulled around a curve and lie flat against it, which is why draping in this house has almost always been done in knit.

Which jersey matters as much as the fact of one. This is Rainino, the house's own designation for a blend of viscose, polyamide, angora, and wool. The viscose carries the weight and the fall, the polyamide holds the knit together and takes the strain the wrapping puts through it, and the angora and wool between them give the surface a soft, faintly raised hand that catches light unevenly across a fold. That is a considerably better cloth than a garment of this kind usually gets, and it is load-bearing rather than decorative, because a wrap with no fastening depends entirely on how the cloth behaves under tension.

The layering also means the density of the garment varies across the body: several thicknesses where the bands cross, one where they do not. It is opaque in some places and nearly not in others, and the piece changes considerably depending on who is wearing it.

This is not only a sleeveless top. What you are buying is a construction.

This is the piece we point at when somebody asks what makes this house different from a very good plain label. It is not styled to look complicated. It is genuinely built in an unusual way, and the way it is built is the only reason it looks like that. We also wanted at least one thing in the store that a customer has to try on to understand, because a wrapped garment photographs as a shape and wears as an entirely different one.

Draping and wrapping, rather than tailoring, are the structural methods this house works in, and the Harness T is one of the most literal expressions of that in the jersey range.

Thirty percent viscose, thirty percent polyamide, twenty percent angora, and twenty percent wool, made in Italy, in Fawn. Sleeveless, built from layered Rainino jersey wrapped around the torso.

A wrapped garment sits differently on different bodies by design, so this will not read the same on two people and it is not meant to. The layered sections have less stretch than the single ones, so the construction holds where it crosses and gives where it does not. A viscose-led jersey with animal fibre in it relaxes across a day and settles back with rest rather than with washing, which is the opposite of how a cotton piece behaves. It is close to the body throughout; there is no version of this that layers over bulk.

On its own with black trousers, which is what it is for. Under the Jumbo Tabard Top if you want the construction visible as a shadow rather than directly, which is a better idea than it sounds. A jacket over it hides the only thing worth seeing.

This is not a tee and it should not be washed like one. Twenty percent angora and twenty percent wool make it knitwear as far as care goes: hand wash cool with a wool detergent at most, or hand it to a cleaner, and dry it flat rather than hanging, because a wrapped garment carries its own weight badly and will lengthen. No heat at any stage. Angora sheds a little in the first wearings, which is the fibre behaving normally rather than a fault, and it settles. Our care guidance on the hair fibres covers the general ground.

For another garment built rather than cut, the LS Prong Shirt. For draping in plain cotton, the Jersey Shroud. As a layer over it, the Jumbo Tabard Top. Everything we currently hold from Rick Owens is listed together.