In the brooding belly of Paris, behind the Palais de Tokyo, Rick Owens staged a collection that wasn’t just a fashion show—it was a rite, a reckoning, and a requiem.

For Spring/Summer 2026, Owens beckoned guests into a brutalist amphitheater of concrete, steel, and silence pierced by the operatic anguish of Klaus Nomi. What unfolded was less catwalk, more ceremonial procession: models trudged across elevated planks, descended into a water basin, and waded, drenched, solemn, as if baptizing themselves in the mythos of decay. Silk taffeta and sculpted leather clung to their bodies, wet with both elegance and existential weight.

This season, mortality and legacy sat heavily on Owens’ shoulders—and on his garments. It was a reflection of the ongoing “Temple of Love” retrospective across town at the Palais Galliera, but also of Owens’ internal monologue: a meditation on time, memory, and the fine line between irony and immortality.

The collection pulsed with Owens’ unmistakable DNA: elongated silhouettes, fetishistic hardware, distressed grandeur, and the drama of monastic futurism. But it also looked inward, revisiting early 2000s leatherwork with Suicide-inspired jackets, and weaving nostalgia into cashmere knits by longtime muse Terry-Ann Frencken. These were not throwbacks—they were ghosts lovingly summoned, worn with intent.

Each look flirted with fragility. Softness met structure in crushed silks, glistening nylons, and rigid leathers, the contrast echoing Owens’ central question: Can beauty survive destruction? Towering Dracula collars, exposed torsos wrapped in corsetry, and metallic accessories whispered of vulnerability dressed as armor, or vice versa.

There were hints of dark humor and raw vulnerability—Owens referenced an OnlyFans foot photography anecdote, dancing on the knife-edge of self-parody and sincere reflection. That tension—between spectacle and sincerity, between provocation and poetry—is what keeps Owens both cult icon and cultural mirror.

And yet, amid the ritual, there was glamour—twisted and glinting. This was Owens’ brand of Hollywood sleaze, the kind that feels like a slow-motion apocalypse on a red carpet, where even ruin shines.

SS26 felt like a turning page, where each soaked garment bore the weight of memory and the shimmer of reinvention. In Owens’ world, fashion isn’t just worn—it’s endured, exalted, and deconstructed to its bones.

In an industry obsessed with rebirth, Rick Owens remains the dark priest of transformation, never following the cycle—always haunting it.