Exhibition Review: Rick Owens Builds His Temple in Paris, Then Heads to Frieze London

Rick Owens, the avant-garde American designer who has lived and worked in Paris since 2003, has reimagined the Palais Galliera as a sanctum of his uncompromising creativity.   

His retrospective in Paris: Temple of Love, open until January 4, 2026, is more than a fashion exhibition: it is a total environment, where clothing, sculpture, installation and memory converge in a ritualistic display of aesthetic conviction. A short walk from the Palais de Tokyo, which recently hosted his SS26 collection, Owens’s works are clearly at home within the galleries of the Palais Galliera.

Visual: Michèle Lamy
(C) Rick Owen

Rick Owens serves as artistic director in Temple of Love, alongside curator Alexandre Samson and honorary director Miren Arzalluz, ensuring every element carries his aesthetic imprint. 

This marks only the third time the Palais Galliera has devoted a retrospective to a living designer—following Azzedine Alaïa in 2013 and Martin Margiela in 2018. Under Owens’s direction, the museum has been dramatically reconfigured, with its interior, façade and forecourt linked together for the first time since the institution’s founding.

As a follow-up to this exhibition, Rick Owens will extend his creative vision beyond Paris with a special presentation at Frieze London in October, hosted by Carpenters Workshop Gallery. There, Owens will unveil a new series of collectible design pieces exploring the conceptual and aesthetic poetics of rust—a material condition he sees as a symbol of both decay and endurance. Among the centerpiece works is a dramatic reinterpretation of his signature Double Bubble chair, now upholstered in vivid blood-red leather. The exhibition will also feature selections of Owens’s vintage fashion and archival pieces. Complementing his display, Owens’s longtime partner and creative collaborator Michèle Lamy will debut a new sculptural installation, continuing the duo’s shared exploration of prehistoric and natural forms—notably antlers and horns, which they see as primal symbols of brutality and self-protection. 

Together, the London showcase and Temple of Love form a powerful dual reflection on impermanence, intimacy, and radical aesthetics.

Meanwhile, in Temple of Love, the retrospective currently at the Palais Galliera, Rick Owens is presented not merely as a designer but as a myth-maker and philosopher of form. The museum itself becomes less a gallery than a devotional space, bridging fashion, architecture, sculpture and performance.

Visitors are immersed in a world that is sculptural and spiritual, yet persistently provocative—an exhibition that unsettles as much as it captivates. Interwoven are examples of Owens’s furniture alongside quotations from the designer, grounding the experience in both physical form and philosophical reflection.

The journey begins with Owens’s Los Angeles years (1992–2003), illuminated through the cultural references that have shaped him since childhood. His Catholic upbringing instilled discipline, while the shadows of 1930s Hollywood, the drama of Wagnerian opera and the decadent symbolism of À rebours informed his rejection of conventional notions of beauty.

Entering the marble halls, visitors are confronted by a stark, austere mood. Severe, spectral figures loom in Owens’s signature silhouettes—draped in asymmetric cuts, elongated tunics and cocoon-like layers of distressed fabrics. Studded leathers, sweeping capes and monastic hoods intensify the atmosphere, their rigid geometry made all the more haunting against the grandeur of the architecture.

The second act of the exhibition charts Owens’s Paris years, from 2003 to the present day, where fashion shows became both spectacle and social commentary. Here, his uninhibited taste for provocation is given full weight. Over time, raw black-leather drapery evolved into complex architectural forms. His familiar palette of “dust” greys and monastic tones expands into mauve and sudden shocks of colour, garments transforming into wearable sculptures.

The exhibition expands beyond the museum’s interior. Classical statues are veiled in sequins; the gardens are punctuated by brutalist cement sculptures, softened by Californian wildflowers recalling Owens’s early years. Inside, multimedia installations nod to artistic references including Gustave Moreau, Joseph Beuys and Steven Parrino, extending the dialogue between fashion and art.

A reconstructed Hollywood bedroom once shared by Owens and his partner and muse Michèle Lamy offers intimate insight into their creative symbiosis. Books, perfumes and a Ziggy Stardust record become relics within a living installation. In another space, provocative video works—most notoriously Horse (depicting simulated copulation with a stallion)—are presented with disclaimers, underscoring Owens’s refusal to shy from controversy.

Temple of Love marks the first time the Palais Galliera has devoted a retrospective to a living designer in Paris, a gesture that underscores Owens’s influence. More than 100 silhouettes are displayed alongside archival objects, personal artefacts and architectural interventions—a testament to an interdisciplinary practice and an uncompromising vision.

Ultimately, the show reframes fashion as a spiritual, political and philosophical pursuit, a continuation of Owens’s three-decade interrogation of beauty, identity and power. Temple of Love is not simply an exhibition but a reckoning: every garment an altar, every installation a provocation. For the fashion-curious, the conceptually driven and all who believe in beauty that unsettles, this is essential viewing.

Photos by Lucia Carpio at the  Palais Galliera, Paris