Rick Owens’ “Temple of Love” Is a Brutalist Sanctuary of Style, Spirit, and Seduction

“Temple of Love” is Owens’ most personal and ambitious project to date: an immersive exhibition that collapses the boundaries between fashion, architecture, sculpture, and devotion. The Palais Galliera is holding the first exhibition in Paris dedicated to the work of avant-garde fashion designer Rick Owens. It features collections from his early beginnings in Los Angeles through to his most recent.  For decades, Owens has carved out a world where shadows reign and glamour decays beautifully. Here, in this brutalist dreamscape, he goes a step further, turning his aesthetic into a cosmology. “I wanted to make something permanent,” Owens says. “A place for reflection. For mourning. For adoration.”

“Temple of Love” unfolds like a sacred procession. Massive concrete plinths echo the stark geometry of 20th-century totalitarian monuments, while pools of dark water shimmer like ceremonial basins. 

At the center of this ritual space, there are garments to show his language of devotion. Iconic silhouettes from the Owens archive are suspended midair, cruciform, cloaked, cocooned. Leather trenches hang like saints’ robes. Feathered capes sway slightly, animated by invisible forces. But these aren’t just fashion artifacts. Owens treats them like holy objects preserved not for wear, but for worship. Each is lit with reverence, casting long, monastic shadows across the walls.

Dedicated as much to aesthetic ideology as to personal mythology. A standout moment is “Sanctum Lamy”, a glowing cube pulsing with distorted projections of Michele Lamy who is Owens’ life partner and creative co-conspirator. Her voice mutters half-sentences in French and English, layered with guttural synths and ritual chants. It’s intimate, almost haunting like stumbling into someone else’s memory. “The temple is about love, yes,” Owens says, “but also about legacy. About finding beauty in mortality.”

Owens doesn’t shy away from vulnerability. In fact, he builds temples to it. His long obsession with brutalism isn’t just aesthetic, it’s emotional. He finds poetry in permanence, emotion in form. Here, the hard becomes soft. The concrete feels alive.

“Temple of Love” isn’t just a retrospective. It’s a thesis statement. Unlike other fashion meets art exhibitions, Owens doesn’t court spectacle. There are no QR codes, no selfies encouraged. The lighting is dim, the silence heavy. It demands presence. Stillness. Respect. It’s about devotion of death and desire. It’s an act of faith. 

The exhibition will run until 04.01.2026 but Owens’ hidden world does not surprise us this much he just announced that he will open an OnlyFans account for his feet. “I thought it was an interesting way of addressing aging,” the designer said, noting he took inspiration from a 19th-century aristocratic who “reduced her life to photographing her feet.” And reminds that; “I’m like, I started my career with a picture of me p—-ing into my mouth,” a photo montage from 2002 that is included in the exhibition catalog, along with other NSFW imagery. “I mean, this is the most innocent thing I’ve ever done.”. He is Rick Owens and no more words needed.

Photography courtesy of Palais Galliera.