In this week’s blog post, Costume Society member Dolla Merrillees reviews the Rick Owens exhibition at Palais Galliera, Paris.
Avant-garde designer Rick Owens has built his reputation on a provocative, uncompromising aesthetic that over the years has established him as one of the most subversive forces in contemporary fashion. He founded his eponymous label in Los Angeles in 1994, and a decade later relocated to Paris with his partner and muse, Michèle Lamy —a move that reshaped both his career and his mythology, and which the city now honours with a major retrospective.
Temple of Love at the Palais Galliera, conceived with Owens as artistic director in collaboration with curators Alexandre Samson and Miren Aralluz, traces the designer’s trajectory from his early days as a patternmaker through to his most recent creations. Featuring more than 100 silhouettes, the exhibition showcases outfits inspired by 1930s glamour, underground subcultures, haute couture and punk rock. Sourced from Owen’s personal archive as well as private collections, they are unified by his relentless experimentation, embrace of unconventional materials, and signature asymmetry, what he frames as an alternative “to the standard cultural aesthetic within which not all of us feel reflected.”
The presentation expands beyond fashion to encompass the intellectual, mystical and artistic references that have shaped Owens’ vision. Works by Gustave Moreau, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Josephy Beuys and Steven Parrino are interlaced with intimate traces of Owen’s own life and practice. This interweaving is most powerfully expressed in the staging of the first gallery, which recalls both the Catholic rituals of his childhood and the grandeur of a Wagnerian opera, with mannequins elevated on soaring altars, illuminated by dramatic lighting and Owens himself chanting liturgically from his favourite passage in À rebours by Huysmans. A scenography that Samson describes as “evoking both reverence and transgression”.
The performative dimension of Owens’ practice, what he calls a “flamboyant perversity”, is also embedded in the clothes themselves, which not only challenge conventional presentations of the body but also engage with broader cultural and political themes. Through their play with gender, the extremes of physicality, and a sculptural approach to form, his garments question not only how the body is enveloped, but how it is staged, perceived, and ultimately experienced. Examples include the padded, cocoon-like silhouettes of the Luxor womenswear Fall/Winter 2023 collection which swaddle the body, and the Michima bustier dress (Porterville collection Fall/Winter 2024), a tangle of tubular forms evoking tree roots that shield the wearer from the outside world.
For the first time, the exhibition also extends beyond the museum walls to the outdoor grounds, where a selection of Owens’ brutalist-style cement sculptures are installed. This monumental sculptural presence is complemented by a garden landscaped with all-blue flowers, including plants native to California such as wild Morning-glory. On the museum façade, statues are draped in sequined fabric, adding a theatrical flourish to the setting.
Through the integration of fashion, sculpture, landscaping, and architectural elements, the Palais Galliera is reimagined as an environment shaped by Owens’s overarching conceptual vision. For him, meaning lies in the cumulative force of the whole—the complete oeuvre—which he regards as his true “work of art.” Although conceived as a unified vision, the execution was not entirely successful; the outdoor components felt disconnected, and the intended continuity between inside and outside was not always clear.
Calling Rick Owens: Temple of Love a “retrospective” feels inadequate. The word suggests summation and closure, a backward glance. As Owens himself observes, “it makes you think about legacy, mortality and ageing, and how long do you stay relevant”. This exhibition resists such finality. Instead, it unfolds as a sustained reflection on form, philosophy, and lived experience —where garments and the carefully orchestrated scenography coalesce into a kind of Wunderkammer.
Indeed, the title itself plays on these associations, evoking museums as temples and spaces of reverence, while recalling the origins of the early cabinets of curiosities. Those assemblages were not only demonstrations of wealth and knowledge but also designed to provoke wonder and contemplation. In this sense, the exhibition frames Owens’s work as a meditation on love, beauty and diversity, echoing his own conviction that “love is the best word to put out there”.
This theme of love underscores the contradictions at the heart of his practice. A self-described “dystopian disruptor”, he nonetheless offers us an alternative vision, one rooted in acceptance and connection. This emotional resonance finds its fullest expression in his relationship with his wife. Lamy’s presence permeates the exhibition —from her influence on the garments, to photographs of the two together, to videos of her 80th birthday, and the intimate recreation of their Californian bedroom, complete with its rumpled bed —making clear the depth of her role as partner and co-creator in his world.
Temple of Love unfolds not as a linear account but as a constellation of objects and ideas. Its immersive environment captures both the scope and depth of Owen’s imagination, a world where the sacred and profane, the monumental and the intimate, and the real and imagined intertwine. As Samson observes, “Transgressive, subversive, provocative or not, everything he does truly reflects what he believes in.” Is it within this contemporary cabinet of curiosities that the “Dark Prince of Fashion” reveals himself through the tension, desire, and dissonance of lived experience.
The exhibition is on view until January 2026.
Dolla recently reviewed the Martin Grant retrospective at the National Gallery of Melbourne, which you can revisit on our blog.
