“I wanted to be an eccentric footnote in fashion history” is how Rick Owens characterized his ambitions as a designer when he started cobbling together clothes 30 years ago on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. “I got way further than I ever even dreamed.”
And how, as Owens readies an exhibition dedicated to his oeuvre at the Palais Galliera in Paris, which opens to the public Thursday.
The sprawling showcase exudes many moods, from the majesty of couture-like dresses and capes pyramidically arranged in soaring felt niches, one reminiscent of the Hoover Dam, to the gleeful depravity of a life-like statue of Owens urinating into a metal trough alongside video footage of other kinky activities.
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Alexandre Samson, head of collections at Galliera and scientific curator of the “Temple of Love” show, named after a Sisters of Mercy song, has delicately titled that room “The Joy of Decadence.”
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“Behind the scenes, our working team has called it ‘piss chapel,’” Owens said nonchalantly about the display. “It has all the more provocative things. And a warning sign.”
To be sure, Owens sugarcoats nothing, his earnestness felt in the halting French he voiced for the audio voiceover in one room; in the recreation of the modest bedroom he shared with his wife and muse Michèle Lamy back in his early L.A. days, and in the hourlong iPhone video of him draping a men’s look from shearling and sweatshirt material that turned out marvelously — much to his surprise and delight.
The Owens takeover of Galliera extends to the building’s wedding-cake-like Beaux-Arts exterior, where he covered classical statuary with totem-like caped figures covered in brown sequins, installed brutalist sculptures in the courtyard based on his “prong” seating, and collaborated with Swedish oral care brand Selahatin on boar-hair toothbrushes for the gift shop. (These marry caveman and minimalist aesthetics, a typical Owens sleight of hand.)
In two other firsts for the museum, he helped curate plantings in its gardens, insisting on morning glories and he and Lamy styled the waiters and bread baskets at its open-air restaurant.
The exhibition lays bare all his forever inspirations — 1930s glamour, the biblical epics of Cecil B. DeMille, “Metropolis,” the Jugendstil art movement, and Joseph Beuys among them — along with the incendiary, underground characters he’s drawn to, from “trans-plegic” Hollywood drag queen Goddess Bunny to Courtney Love, who contributed a rambling homage for the exhibition catalogue.
“I’m still promoting the values that I’ve always promoted ‚ promoting flexibility in aesthetics to accommodate people who don’t see themselves reflected in the very strict and cruel standards that we live with,” Owens mused.
The designer is listed as artistic director of the exhibition, which runs through Jan. 4, 2026, and he left lots of rope to the other curators with the proviso that his intentions not be misconstrued.
“I get the impression that a lot of people consider me all transgression all the time and that’s fine, because those people are not going to really like me anyway,” he said in an interview, part of it conducted during a car ride to the museum. “But if I were just all transgression all the time, I wouldn’t have lasted this long. There has to be a certain amount of quality and sophistication for people to be able to trust in or believe. And I feel like I’ve given enough of that.”
Samson ranks Owens alongside designers like Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, Madame Grès and Cristóbal Balenciaga, who designed via patterns and draping, not sketching.
“Rick goes immediately to the fabric and to the three-dimensional aspect of the clothes. And that makes him very different,” he said, also highlighting the consistency throughout his career, where narrow fishtail skirts recur and recur, along with humble colors like dust brown, gray, ivory and black.
“It felt important to me right now to showcase a work of an independent designer with a very special vision, very true to himself,” he said. “it’s reassuring proof that you can be different and that it can work as a business.”
The exhibition’s main rooms are dedicated to his Hollywood years and his Paris career, where he’s become one of the fashion capital’s consummate showmen, incorporating smoke bombs and other pyrotechnics into his shows.
The American designer admits that when he first started out, he favored “a very destroyed look” as his main fashion statement. The exhibition includes very early designs made from decaying fabrics.
“And that was an obviously adolescent reaction to the status quo, and it was a gesture of contempt. We see this cycle happening, and it’s a valid one….Every generation rejects the one before it. But as I grew older, I felt that rejection was not enough. I needed to contribute. I couldn’t just complain.
“So the way I dress now is very different, because now it’s black and very tailored and very sharp, because I feel like the world is so chaotic and messy that I like to inject a little note of formality, and formality implies politeness,” he explained.
Among the 100 outfits on display are some bombastic, kite-like contraptions, bulbous pileups of fabric donuts, and a Chewbacca-esque cape-cum-sarcophogus. Yet his more sinuous, sculptural designs radiate glamour, romance and an otherworldly regalness.
Owens was the subject of a retrospective in 2017 at the Triennale design museum in Milan.
“It turned out very bombastic,” he said of that showcase, which was punctuated by a gargantuan intestine of black sludge that undulated its way through the building. “I thought it was wonderful. But I thought, you know, next time, if I ever get the chance to do this again, I would want to do something a little bit more delicate and more focusing on the craft.
“Even for people who are rolling their eyes at my provocations, I think this will satisfy their need for quality — at least I hope so,” he added.
Besides the mesmerizing draping video, visitors can marvel at sculptural tops of glass beads that evoke Frank Gehry architecture, delicate millefeuille tops made of fish leather, screen-siren gowns galore and his figure-hugging leather jackets, a strip of knitwear embedded in the sleeves for a sleeker fit.
Owens once mused that he’ll probably be remembered for droopy shorts, long T-shirts and funky sneakers — among menswear designs enthusiastically embraced by hype beasts and tech entrepreneurs. He’s absolutely fine with that, though the exhibition mostly spotlights the graceful allure of his waist-conscious tailoring and dresses for women, and the superhero quality embedded in his coats and capes for men.
In her catalogue entry, Love recalls happening upon Owens during a magazine run, watching him work “like a scorcerer” on burlap T-shirts and felt skirts the color of dust, which she hastily bought, finding them “so original and cool.”
She marveled at his success, and applauded that he maintained his independence. “There was always logic behind what you did,” she said.
Indeed, the designer’s intentions are based on high ideals — kindness, tolerance and humility among them — even if his methods can sometime shock.
For example, his so-called “Free Willy” menswear show, where models’ penises were visible via peepholes on his clothes, was to poke fun at prudishness, given how naked statuary in public parks never raises an eyebrow.
“I will be doing transgression till the day I die, because that is my protest,” he said. “It is a response to the prissy moralism and judgment that I see in the world. It is my way of saying, ‘Lighten up, don’t take it all so seriously.’ A little bit of wicked fun is elegant. Humor, self-deprecation and being able to laugh at yourself is the most elegant thing there is.”
With his penchant for menacing models, black-out contact lenses and jutting shoulders, Owens is also a forever torchbearer for different kinds of beauty, and a safe haven for people who feel persecuted for being outside the norm.
The designer had his epiphany as a teenager rummaging through the discount record bins in the basement of K-mart, when he happened upon David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs” album, which depicted him naked as a half-man, half-dog hybrid. (It’s included in one of the table displays.)
“I just remember feeling flushed with embarrassment, but also excited,” he recalled. “It was a moment where, as a small-town sissy, I saw somewhere I could go. I saw somewhere something I could be. I saw a vision of this grotesque glamour that I could connect to, and it was so liberating.”
Owens now has the confidence to walk around Paris in his Frankenstein-shouldered tailoring, sequins and high-heeled boots. He recalled one night being glammed up and walking to an event with his protégé Tyrone Susman, and making a small detour through a small, grotto-like park he appreciates, only to encounter a sinister-looking gang of youths.
“I’m like, f–k, I’m 60 years old. I mean, like, who’s gonna try and beat me up anymore?” he recalled. “And we had to walk past them to get through. Lo and behold they looked up and called out, ‘Hey, Rick Owens!’ It was the cutest thing. It was so satisfying.”