From Underground LA to Parisian Couture, Owens Has Built a World That Defies Classification. Temple of Love Brings Us Inside It
April 11, 2025- Rick Owens Exhibition at Palais Galliera
This Summer, Rick Owens will take over Paris’ Palais Galliera for his largest exhibition to date — Temple of Love, a retrospective blurring the lines between sculpture, memory, and radical fashion. The exhibition spills beyond the gallery walls, wraps around the museum’s façade, climbs into its gardens, and rewires its classical bones.
Curated under Owens’ own direction, the exhibition traces decades of work with precision and force. Over 100 silhouettes will anchor the display, joined by personal documents, video works, and site-specific installations. Brutalist sculptures punctuate the garden. Sequined fabric wraps outdoor statues. Inside, a full-scale replica of Owens and Michèle Lamy’s California bedroom distills the show’s intimate core.
In the garden, 30 brutalist sculptures will rise from the gravel like pagan relics. They’re surrounded by Californian plants — transplanted here as living memory. Across the building’s historic façade, sequined fabric wraps classical statues in shimmering defiance.
The Iconoclast in Residence
Born in Porterville, California in 1961, Rick Owens was raised among the dry heat and sharp light of the West Coast. The desert, the sprawl, the brutalism of space — all of it lives in his work.
He began as a pattern cutter in Los Angeles. Before long, he was reshaping what clothes could be: long, draped leather, jagged hems, silence instead of spectacle. By 1994, he had launched his label. By 2003, he moved to Paris — and stayed.
Since then, Owens has built one of fashion’s most radical bodies of work. His silhouettes are stark and sculptural. The palette rarely strays from ash, blood, and bone. His shows have featured Black female step teams, exposed male bodies, and processions that feel more sacred than staged.
But behind the provocation is architecture. Every drape, every cut, is grounded in construction. He pulls from early Hollywood, German expressionism, and the sacred violence of DeMille’s biblical films. Add Joseph Beuys, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Gustave Moreau — and the full picture begins to form.
Owens calls his style “glunge” — glamour and grunge, collapsed into one gesture. But that’s only part of the story. He designs like he’s building a temple. His wife and collaborator, Michèle Lamy, is the priestess. Temple of Love is an invitation to step inside the world he’s spent three decades constructing.
Temple of Love, Rick Owens Exhibition at Palais Galliera
📍 Palais Galliera, Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris
🗓 June 28, 2025 – January 4, 2026
🎨 Artistic Direction: Rick Owens
🧠 Curators
Miren Arzalluz (General)
Alexandre Samson (Scientific)
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