RICK OWENS SS26: A DIP IN DARKNESS AND TENACITY

Camz
Oct 9
2 min read

Water, black eyes, and eerie grace

This women’s show in early October saw models descending metal bleachers and wading through knee-high water at the Palais de Tokyo. The leaves were turning golden along the Seine, Grace Slick wailing about love on the soundtrack, “Don’t you want somebody…don’t you need somebody…”, and black contacts covering not just iris and pupil but the whites of the eyes added an almost alien intensity. What could have been a casual walk through water became a statement of purpose, unnerving yet magnetic.

Some spectators imagined refugees crossing water, others “another world arriving,” as if aliens had chosen Paris for their debut. Lucite-heel platform boots only amplified the calculated performance. In Rick Owens’s universe, even a wade through water is choreographed for maximum effect.

Delicacy with steel

The clothes were a masterclass in contrasts. Draped layers intersected with geometric seams, giving the illusion of fragility while radiating inner strength. “The clothes are delicate and pretty, but there’s a steeliness to the prettiness…during uncomfortable times in history, tenacity is paramount,” Owens said. That steeliness, that stubborn insistence on beauty with edge, has defined his work for decades.

Retrospective, canonization, and stubbornness

The show coincided with the opening of Owens’s career retrospective, Temple of Love, at the Palais Galliera across the street. Joining Azzedine Alaïa and Martin Margiela as the only living designers to be honored by the museum is no small achievement.

Talent, luck, and relentless determination were all required, Owens reflected. His career has never been about ease. The canonization feels earned, even if he prefers a dry joke to basking in accolades.

The Owens uniform, updated

Owens’s hallmarks are unmistakable: muted colors, willowy 1930s-inspired silhouettes, exaggerated shoulders flirting with the impossible, sculptural draping, and platforms that extend the figure to near-surreal proportions.

Spiky, fringed leather capes by the young London designer Straytukay added a sharp counterpoint, while a rare print adorned long black or ivory dresses and matching bombers, a copy of the star chart Owens’s father once made for him. Nostalgia, geometry, and mythology collided seamlessly, as if the cosmos itself had dictated the collection.

Conclusion: the beauty of persistence

Watching the models move through water, balanced and composed, reminds us that Rick Owens’s fashion is never casual. It is deliberate, exacting, and slightly unsettling, yet undeniably beautiful. There is poetry in the darkness, humor in the extremity, and above all, an unshakable conviction that tenacity, in boots, in water, in life, is everything. And if some neighbors thought they saw aliens crossing the Seine, well…maybe they weren’t entirely wrong.

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