The Palais de Tokyo has been the unofficial home of Rick Owens’ Paris fashion shows for some time, but another cultural institution across the Avenue President Wilson, the Palais Galliera, is now housing the designer’s first Parisian solo retrospective.
Owens, a CFDA member, was given carte blanche on the exhibition, working alongside Palais Galliera’s honorary director Miren Arzalluz and scientific director Alexandre Samson.
The show, which extends to the 19th-century building’s grounds, traces Owens’ early life, his inspirations, and various collection themes.
The first gallery explores Owens’ personal and professional origins, from his strict Catholic upbringing in Porterville, CA where his father taught him discipline. It’s where he discovered a love for classical music, vintage Hollywood movies such as “Cleopatra” and “Salome,” and the influential 19th-century French book “Against the Grains,” and where, as a patternmaker, he learned to make designer dupes and met his wife, Michele Lamy.
Hanging from the ceiling is a mannequin in a brown woolen cape design – a nod to his love of brutalism – while personal artifacts include books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, a hand drawn star chart, a table setting designed by the couple, and various print memorabilia such as Bowie’s “Diamond Dog” liner notes. Here, visitors learn of his love for 1930s design, Fortuny, his wife’s influence, Owens’ influential time designing for furrier Revillon and the transition from Las Palmas, CA—complete with a recreation of the couple’s bedroom, the furniture Owens designed and their life in Paris. A grouping of white designs, slinky jerseys and leather styles also demonstrate the commerciality of Owens’ avant-garde ethos.
The following gallery displays work on tall white block pedestals. It is grouped by various design themes—Sculptural Confrontation, Tenderness, Brutalism, Physicality, The Gender Paradox, etc.—with museum labels explaining the inspiration and the cultural moments Owens was reacting to.
Also on show are inflatable boots, sculptural designs made with down fabrics (a result of Owens work with Moncler), a 3D kite-like look, human backpack styles, and more.
A strictly no-cameras side room with Owens’ private projects came with warnings to those sensitive to graphic images. It was flanked by a wax-museum quality effigy of a shirtless Owens whose member served as a fountain – commissioned initially for his home as a sarcastic take on the personal portrait over the fireplace. The room also contained graphic videos that Owens described as defending otherness with “kindness and love.”
On the venue’s outside grounds, Owens draped three Sisters of Mercy statues in sequin fabric and dotted the landscape with California foliage and his Brutalist cement sculptures.
At the opening, guests including Carine Roitfeld, Mel Ottenberg and Michel Gaubert, enjoyed cocktails by Parisian mixology specialists Cravan while catching a break from the summer heat – which was interrupted by a flash-flood windstorm whose natural drama seemed befitting of Rick Owens’ magnificently powerful vision.
