How To Tie Rick Owens Laces

Anyone who buys their first pair of Rick Owens sneakers usually has the same reaction. The laces are too long. Way too long, in fact, and there’s no card in the box explaining why. That’s because Rick Owens doesn’t design lacing as an afterthought; it’s part of the silhouette, the same way a dropped shoulder or an oversized cuff is part of his tailoring. Once you stop treating the laces like a normal shoelace problem, the whole thing starts to make sense. Below is how people who actually wear these shoes tend to lace them, boot by boot, sneaker by sneaker.

Why The Laces Run Long

The extra length isn’t a manufacturing mistake, even though it looks like one at first glance. officialrickowens.com has always played with proportion, and footwear is no exception to that instinct. Longer laces let you wrap, drape, or double back depending on the shoe, which a standard lace can’t do. Pull both sides through evenly before you attempt any pattern, or the whole thing will sit crooked. It sounds obvious, but a lot of people skip this and wonder why one side looks shorter for weeks. Give the tongue a minute to settle centered before you start threading anything. That small step honestly makes or breaks how the final lace-up looks.

Straight Bar For The Ramones

The Ramones sneaker is probably the most recognized shoe in the entire Rick Owens catalog, and it wants straight bar lacing, not the crisscross most people default to. Instead of crossing diagonally, you run the lace straight across, hole to the hole directly opposite it. Go up the shoe row by row like that until you hit the top. It takes a bit longer than a normal crisscross tie, and your fingers will probably fumble it the first time. But the payoff is a flatter, cleaner front panel that looks closer to what’s shown on the runway. This is the lacing style you’ll see repeated across nearly every Rick Owens sneaker collaboration, including the Adidas releases.

Wrapping Around The Ankle

High-top boots are where the extra lace length really earns its keep. Once you reach the final eyelet, don’t tie off bring both ends around the back of the ankle instead. Cross them once in front, then loop around again if there’s still length left over. It feels strange the first time, almost like wrapping a bandage rather than tying a shoe. But that wrap is exactly what gives Rick Owens boots their sculptural, slightly aggressive stance. It also locks the boot to your ankle far better than a simple bow ever could, which matters more than people expect once you’re actually walking around in them.

Skip The Bow Entirely

You won’t see many bows on a finished pair of Rick Owens shoes, and that’s intentional. After wrapping or crossing, tuck the remaining lace into the side or under the tongue instead of tying it off. Some people double the lace back on itself before tucking, just for extra hold. Others leave a little slack showing for texture, which honestly looks fine too there’s no single correct amount. A neat bow reads sporty, and sporty isn’t really the mood here. The tuck keeps things streamlined, closer to the tailoring language the rest of the brand is built around.

Matching The Method To The Shoe

Not every Rick Owens shoe wants the same treatment, and that’s worth knowing before you commit to one lacing style. A chunky sole like the Geobasket needs tighter lacing up top to balance out all that bulk underneath. A slimmer boot, on the other hand, looks better with a looser wrap that echoes the drape you’d see in his runway shows. When the Rick Owens x Adidas sneakers dropped, resellers noticed pairs with the lacing intact held their value better than ones sold loose or restrung. That’s a small but telling detail about how much the lacing actually matters to people who follow this brand closely.

Give It A Few Tries

Nobody nails this on the first attempt, and that includes people who’ve owned several pairs already. The lace length feels unfamiliar if you’re used to regular trainers, so expect some trial and error early on. If a wrap looks uneven or feels too tight, just undo it and start again — there’s no shortcut here. Most people get comfortable by their second or third pair, once their hands remember the motion. Watching how the lace sits against your ankle tells you more than any written instruction ever will. Comfort with the process comes faster than most people assume going in.

Why It’s Worth Getting Right

Rick Owens has built a two-decade reputation on details that look small until you understand them. Lacing is one of those details, and it separates people who bought the shoe from people who actually studied it. Resale listings for pairs with original lacing intact routinely fetch more than restrung ones. Stylists still point to the wrap-around lacing when they talk about what makes this brand’s silhouette so recognizable. Newer fans discovering Rick Owens through Adidas collaborations often search for the correct method online for exactly this reason. Getting it right doesn’t just look better it also sits more comfortably once the tension is where it should be.