Michélle Lamy: Allegedly a Witch, Definitely a Fashion Oracle
In her designs, the High Priestess of Rick Owens blurs the lines between style and magic.
Michélle Lamy doesn’t walk into a room — she appears, as if conjured from smoke and silver.
Born in Jura, France, to a family with Algerian roots, she grew from a lawyer and cabaret owner into one of fashion’s most magnetic figures. Her gold teeth flash like secret omens. Silver talismans clink against henna-darkened fingers. Kohl circles her eyes so deeply that it feels like she’s staring from another century. And every morning, before anything else, she draws a single dark line across her forehead — part Amazigh-inspired ritual, part personal magic, part whispered provocation.
The fashion world calls her the High Priestess of Rick Owens. Some call her an artist, others a muse. In more superstitious corners, she’s allegedly a witch — the kind who can dress you in something that changes your fate.
The Amazigh: People of the Mountains and the Stars
The Amazigh — often called “Berbers” by outsiders, though they prefer their own name — are the Indigenous people of North Africa, stretching from Morocco’s Atlas and Rif Mountains to the Sahara’s edge. In Nador, in Morocco’s Rif region, Amazigh women are keepers of an ancient visual language. They wear silver as protection and currency, henna to mark life’s turning points, and tattoos as living amulets.
Facial tattoos tell entire life stories:
-
Triangles for fertility and the feminine divine.
-
Dots to shield against the evil eye.
-
Lines to anchor the soul to its tribe.
Their garments are layered for both ceremony and survival — wool against the mountain cold, embroidery as silent poetry, colors and symbols speaking to lineage and belief.
The Sacred Silver & the Mark of Power
In Amazigh culture, silver is more than decoration — it is alive.
It reflects light to repel the evil eye. It hums with lunar energy, believed to link the wearer to the moon’s cycles and the mysteries of night. It is given as a wedding gift, passed down through generations as protection and blessing.
The forehead marking — whether tattooed, painted, or drawn in kohl — is a spiritual seal. Positioned between the eyes, it guards the “third eye,” the inner sight. It is both a shield and a beacon, calling on ancestral spirits to watch over the wearer.
Michelle Lamy’s daily forehead line echoes this tradition — a modern, personal talisman. Whether you see it as a nod to the Amazigh, an ancestral whisper from her Algerian roots, or the sigil of an alleged witch, it is unmistakably hers.
The Queens of the Rif, Reimagined
Lamy has absorbed these codes with respect and transformed them through her lens. The fortress-like jewelry of Nador becomes brutalist, oversized rings and cuffs. The geometry of tattoos becomes the architecture of her silhouettes. Her forehead line — drawn daily in dark pigment — is her homage to Amazigh markings, a personal sigil that’s part style, part invocation.
Her Algerian heritage creates a bridge between her French upbringing and her fascination with North African tradition, making her interpretation feel less like a distant aesthetic choice and more like an ancestral echo.
From Jura to the Runway of Rick Owens
Her partnership with her husband, Rick Owens, is a fusion of opposites: his monastic minimalism infused with her layered mysticism. The ceremonial drape of Amazigh robes finds new life in his leather coats. The silver talismans of the Rif are echoed in sculptural hardware. Together, they’ve built a fashion universe where tribal power meets gothic futurism.
Hollywood’s Alleged Witch
Rihanna. Madonna. Kanye West. A$AP Rocky. Jared Leto.
When celebrities enter Michelle Lamy’s orbit, they often leave transformed — looking like they’ve stepped through a portal into another dimension. She doesn’t just style; she casts. And in certain whispers, “being Lamy-ed” is like being blessed and cursed in the same breath.
Connect with Facebook