RICK OWENS: THE DARK PRINCE OF FASHION

If Karl Lagerfeld was the Kaiser or emperor, Rick Owens is a prince, but not the wholesome Disney variety, as his retrospective, "Temple of Love," at the Palais Galliera unequivocally attests, with even a gabinetto segreto that's rated "R.

- RICKY TOLEDO & CHITO VIJANDRE

Pieces done in collaboration with Fortuny. (FW 2019) The Rick Owens wax statue version of "Mannekin Pis." Fashion for Sacred Rituals (2024-2025, 2011, 2014) Mannequins in Rick Owens defying the sunlight.

(@rickytchitov @chemistryburner @rickytchitov @rickytchitov)

Owens has regularly shocked audiences, both with his catwalk shows, his clothes, and all other media that he has dabbled in.

Entering the dimly lit main hall of the exhibit, you may think that he has been reformed. The installations are like altars with some elongated mannequins dressed like monks in robes, positioned like a choir by the tabernacle, with side chapels featuring gowns in muted shades, from old white to dust and dark shadow.

'Temple of Love' at the Palais Galliera blends decadence, spirituality and rebellion into a provocative vision of beauty.

There's the soundtrack of what seems like a priest speaking in Latin at High Mass, which turns out to be Owens reciting lines from Joris-Karl Huysmans' À rebours, which he discovered in his father's library during his youth in Porterville, a small town in California where he had his beginnings as a "redneck." He identified with the novel's hero — the eccentric, ailing aesthete Jean des Esseintes, the last scion of an aristocratic family who loathes 19th-century bourgeois society, from which he retreats to create an ideal artistic world.

Owens' hybridity, with a Mexican mother and an Anglo-American father, coupled with a Catholic education and a strict upbringing filled with classical music and philosophical and literary lectures, found him in the same trajectory as Jean. He discovered biblical accounts and rare works ranging from 19th-century French literature to early major Hollywood films that captured his imagination.