Temple of Flesh: Rick Owens Floods Paris–Again

Thunder cracked over Paris as day two of Fashion Week came to a chaotic close — streets flooded, stilettos submerged, and fashion’s elite left wading through thigh-deep waters on Avenue Montaigne. As the city spiraled into near-biblical drama, Rick Owens — prophet of glamorized doom — opened the gates to Temple, his SS26 menswear show.

Held at his spiritual home, Palais de Tokyo, the runway was more ritual than presentation. Models emerged from behind scaffolding, descended into a shallow pool, and began their procession — soaked, solemn, sculptural. The sun scorched overhead, the air thick with humidity. But this wasn’t about climate. This was climate collapse couture.

Rick isn’t interested in escapism. While other brands are floating down fantasy runways, he’s dragging us into reality — half-drenched, spine-straight, strapped into leather harnesses and orthopedic sandals. The show’s title, Temple, mirrored the name of his retrospective opening just across the street at Palais Galliera: Temple of Love. But love, in Rick’s world, is dense, ritualistic, and tinged with decay. “A retrospective brings to mind decline,” he said. “I was happy to lean into that.”

What followed was a procession of flesh and hardware. Leather rigging evoked both bondage and Baroque — garlands twisted into body straps, flashes of skin framed between slashed hides. It was both violent and devotional, caught somewhere between Hollywood sleaze and neoclassical longing. And while Rick’s always flirted with spectacle, this time the drama felt deeply grounded. There was gravity in every soaked silhouette.

He dug into the past without nostalgia. Cashmere knitwear, reimagined by his first fit model Terry-Ann Fricken, brought early-2000s Rick back to the surface — not as throwback, but as reincarnation. Meanwhile, a collaboration with legendary New York punk band Suicide infused the show with scorched-electronica energy: leather jackets raw and unhinged, as if pulled from the ruins of CBGB’s basement.

The pièce de résistance? Not a look, but a moment: Tyrone Dylan, Rick’s muse and opening model, scaling a central steel sculpture in vertiginous Kiss boots, dripping from the fountain below, clinging like a soaked saint in a post-apocalyptic cathedral. It was part fashion show, part fever dream.

And yet, amid the spectacle, a softness. Voluminous parkas in silk taffeta, GRS-certified nylons woven by old Italian mills, and cotton shorts paired with open-toed, Velcro-strapped orthopedic sneakers affectionately dubbed Burrito Sneaks. The balance of the grotesque and the tender is where Rick thrives.

He’s not scared of the end — he designs for it. While others scramble for relevance, Rick turns his possible “downfall” into a set piece. That’s the trick: by embracing ephemerality, he becomes eternal. Long live the king of darkness, water, and light.