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Rick Owens’ TEMPLE OF LOVE SS26 men’s show at Palais de Tokyo staged in the museum’s forecourt during Paris Fashion Week stood out precisely because of its bold embrace of spectacle. In an era where fashion shows increasingly eschew idiosyncrasy in favor of more hemmed-in approaches, Owens, ever the iconoclast, enacted the quirkiest show of the season.
This time, the models emerged from water. In what read as a kind of baptismal procession, they stepped out of the fountain beneath a brutal summer sun, bodies drenched, platforms soaked, silhouettes dragging trails of water along the stone. The image was heavy with symbolism: rebirth, exposure, vulnerability. Owens himself described it as: “a baptism of love” a phrase he reiterated in an interview with dazed magazine, framing the show as something almost spiritual in its conception.
Inside, paintings by Gustave Moreau lined the rooms, while outside, the brutalist expanse of Palais de Tokyo— its concrete walls, wide stone stairs, and open sky became both stage and set. It felt industrial, sacred, and entirely intentional. Owens continues to use this venue not just as a backdrop, but as an active collaborator in the storytelling of love. The architecture echoed the severity of the garments, turning each step and climb into a kind of ceremony.
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But amid all this intensity, there was subversion too. Perhaps the most unexpected feature was a statue, seemingly modeled after Owens himself, casually urinating into the same space where the models were performing this act of rebirth. The statue streamed uninterrupted for the duration of the show. It was impossible to unsee and deliberately so. At a moment when everything else was poised and profound, this statue made space for irreverence, for absurdity, and for a wink at Owens’ own mythology. It made the tone more dimensional. It reminded us that even in his most ambitious gestures, Owens refuses to be consumed by self-importance. As he said in a letter distributed to guests just prior to his S/S 2026 menswear show “A retrospective summons up thoughts of peaking, finality and decline… I was delighted to lean into that.”
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There were quieter choices, too. Fog moved with intention, timed to veil and reveal each model like a curtain of smoke. Lighting was natural and harsh, uncompromising in its honesty. There was no music, just the sound of water and movement. Everything was elemental. And the models became part of it, folding into the rhythm of stone, sun, and steam.
While other designers leaned into AI-enhanced storytelling, digital backdrops, and overstimulation this season, Rick Owens used nothing but bodies, water, and architecture to create tension, humor, and release. In doing so, he reminded us that stillness can be cinematic, that space can be narrative, and that sometimes the most compelling performance is one that dares to do less.
