The Palais Galliera hosts a new exhibition in Paris dedicated to the sultry designer Rick Owens. Since June 18, 2025, the museum unveils a hundred silhouettes able to enlighten the public about the career of the American designer.
After Alber Elbaz and Azzedine Alaïa, it’s Rick Owens’ turn to be at the heart of a retrospective at the Palais Galliera. The mythical fashion museum, nestled in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, highlights the work of the Californian designer in an immersive journey.
A unique artist
From June 18 to January 4, 2026, the exhibition “Rick Owens, Temple of Love” features more than 100 outfits that have marked the designer’s creative life. Known for his style against polished glamour and conventional silhouettes, Rick Owens has always distinguished himself by his strong collections, far from the standards of fashion and couture.
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Sculptural, his pieces reveal outrageous volumes, abandoning the silhouette until then long-line of the world of couture in favor of humanoid creatures, as if from another planet. It uses bold fabrics and fuses them with confidence, between jersey, military materials, washed leather. The lines are rough, like carved in stone, but can reveal a certain softness at second reading. Its signature grey is the perfect representation of his universe, while his beauties are marked by a gothic style. Each parade questions, shocks and denounces, without losing this sophisticated side. Between ancient memory and post-apocalyptic vision, Rick Owens has been delivering a transgressive fashion manifesto for three decades.
Archives, videos and installations enrich this retrospective developed with the museum and Rick Owens in person. His wife, Michèle Lamy, who participated extensively in the development of the brand and influenced its style, is highlighted, for example with a reconstitution of the couple’s American bedroom. Sources of inspiration for Rick Owens, works by Gustave Moreau, Joseph Beuys and Steven Parrino are also on display.
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The tour continues outside the building where 30 cement sculptures and statues of the facade are dressed in fabrics embroidered with glitter. The exhibition “Rick Owens, Temple of Love” is a large-scale and unprecedented format that reflects on love, beauty and difference through a monumental staging,” said Palais Galliera.
From a Los Angeles brand to an international brand
Born in 1961 in California, Rick Owens is the anti-fashion designer par excellence. Art student in Los Angeles, he left school and worked in mainstream sportswear companies. Boosted by his meeting with his wife and muse Michèle Lamy in the late 80s, and encouraged by a passion for fashion, he launched his own label in 1994.
Initially sold only in the multi-brand Charles Gallay store in Los Angeles, the label took advantage of its partnership with Eo Bocci Associati to expand internationally. Thanks to this commercial and media success, Rick Owens received the 2002 Best Hope in Ready-to-Wear award from the prestigious American Fashion Designers’ Council (CFDA). The same year, he presented his first women’s collection at New York Fashion Week, encouraged by Anna Wintour, the legendary editor of Vogue US. A few months later, the men’s line is officially launched. If the pieces are produced in Italy, Rick Owens decides to capitalize on the effervescence of fashion in Paris and moves his workshops. He opened his first store in the capital in 2006. Since then, the brand has been present in major shopping cities around the world, from Milan to Miami and Dubai to Shanghai.
In 2017, he was awarded for his entire career by the CFDA. This award is in addition to the many distinctions received by Rick Owens, testimony of the artistic aura of the creator who knew, through his nonconformist style and his committed messages, capture both a niche of underground modders and a large audience in search of powerful silhouettes.
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Featured photo : © Palais Galliera
