Inside the Rick Owens: Temple of Love retrospective at Palais Galliera, where devotion, duality, and disruption redefine Parisian fashion
Soft yet severe, romantic yet confrontational, monk-like yet messianic: it could only be Rick Owens. And like him, his devotees—self-described as freaks and weirdos—move through fashion’s shadows, rewriting its rules.
During Paris Fashion Week, Owens typically transforms the Palais de Tokyo into a theatre of the extraordinary, delivering show-stopping performances that captivate fashion insiders from across the globe. This season, however, the so-called Lord of Darkness extends his visionary approach to the Palais Galliera, Paris’s premier fashion museum, for the long-awaited Rick Owens retrospective, Rick Owens: Temple of Love.
On view until 4 January 2026, and accompanied by a catalogue published by Rizzoli, the exhibition offers visitors a journey into Owens’ universe, blending fashion, art, and ritual in a way only the American designer can deliver—making it the must-see exhibition in Paris for 2025.
Rick Owens at Palais Galliera: Paris’s Must-See Fashion Event of 2025
Born in California in 1961, Rick Owens launched his eponymous brand in 1994 after gaining experience as a pattern-cutter. His early collections—gothic, glam, and raw— originated from the LA underground but quickly caught the eye of the Paris fashion establishment. In 2003, he moved to France, where he began using the runway as a platform for both spectacle and subversion.
At the Palais Galliera, over 100 silhouettes chart his creative journey from his early days in Los Angeles to his current Paris-based design practice.
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Rick Owens ‘Temple Of Love’, held at Palais Galliera, opened 28 June 2025 and will be on untill 4 January 2026
Tracing the Evolution of Rick Owens’ Vision from California to Paris
Born in California in 1961, Rick Owens launched his eponymous brand in 1994 after gaining experience as a pattern-cutter. His early collections—gothic, glam, and raw— originated from the LA underground but quickly caught the eye of the Paris fashion establishment. In 2003, he moved to France, where he began using the runway as a platform for both spectacle and subversion.
At the Palais Galliera, over 100 silhouettes chart his creative journey from his early days in Los Angeles to his current Paris-based design practice.
Looks exhibited in Rick Owens' Temple of Love Retrospective. Courtesy Maze35
Inside Rick Owens: Temple of Love—Fashion, Ritual and Identity
The first room is deliberately dim; rich fabrics drape the walls, and chapel-like alcoves carefully spotlight early silhouettes. These include LA pieces that Rick Owens almost didn’t preserve, sourced from former collaborators and painstakingly recontextualised and dated. His signature “dust” grey dominates the space, while sculptural garments balance both restraint and excess.
Each look is a study in duality: soft and severe, romantic and confrontational, monk-like and messianic. This tension lies at the heart of the Rick Owens: Temple of Love exhibition, which features warrior robes infused with reflective softness—myths rendered in textiles.
Highlights include pieces crafted from army blankets and salvaged leather, alongside more recent experiments with volume, colour, and gender fluidity. Artworks by Gustave Moreau, Joseph Beuys and Steven Parrino are interspersed throughout, anchoring Rick Owens’ vision within a broader dialogue of symbolism, performance and postmodern decay.
Inside Rick Owens’ Temple of Love: a hauntingly beautiful exhibition merging fashion, architecture, and rebellion at Palais Galliera Paris. Courtesy Maze35
Rick Owens’ Parisian Transformation: A Journey Through Light and Shadow
I move through the dark and into the next gallery, a space filled with light, where Owens’s evolution unfolds chronologically. It starts with his early leather-and-black arcana to the lighter, architectural palette of his Paris era.
Rick Owens’ obsession with elongation is evident in his use of bias-cut skirts and leather coats with jersey sleeves—designs that stretch the silhouette into something almost ceremonial. Once in Paris, his language evolved: brutalist references crept in, echoing the concrete monoliths of Le Corbusier and lending his garments a sculptural, architectural tension.
Owens has long challenged societal norms—casting step-dancing troupes, staging controversial shows where male models exposed their bodies, questioning gender constructs. Yet, he also speaks of gentleness and inclusivity. His aesthetic asserts softness in defiance of judgement and conventional standards.
What Rick Owens’ Retrospective Reveals About Fashion and Identity
The exhibition transcends clothing; it is layered with personal documents, video works, sketches and a meticulous reconstruction of Owens and Michèle Lamy’s Los Angeles bedroom.
The show feels deliberately non-linear—it’s not organised as a “greatest hits” collection. Instead, it unfolds like a ritual: quiet, cinematic, imposing. You don’t just walk through it; you drift, hover, and contemplate.
Rick Owens: Temple of Love is a sincere title, reflecting devotion rather than irony. The “love” referenced in the title isn’t sentimental; it’s about commitment, friction, transformation. This is most evident in the ongoing creative relationship with Michèle Lamy, Owens’ wife, muse and collaborator, whose influence is felt throughout the exhibition.
“Love is the best word to put out there. Maybe it’ll help manifest something,” says Rick Owens.
Rick Owens’ Temple of Love transforms fashion into ritual—an intimate, sculptural meditation on devotion, creation, and the art of becoming. Courtesy Maze35
Why Rick Owens: Temple of Love Is the Exhibition Defining Paris in 2025
What makes this retrospective particularly poignant is that Rick Owens is still very much active—still evolving, still pushing. Unlike many retrospectives, this isn’t a career capstone. It’s more of a living archive—an offering from someone who has always danced at the edges of fashion’s mainstream, yet somehow reshaped it from within.
Curated by Alexandre Samson, with Owens as the artistic director, Rick Owens: Temple of Love is more than a celebration; it’s a meditation. It reminds us that silence, shadows and sculptural grace can define an entire era of fashion. The designer once dubbed the “prince of the underground” now holds court in Paris’s temple of fashion history. Yet, he hasn’t conformed to its traditions; he has redesigned them entirely.
Massimo Casagrande
Director of Education, Paris