Rick Owens presented his Spring/Summer 2026 menswear collection, Temple, on June 26 at Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The title is a nod to Temple of Love, a retrospective held immediately after at Palais Galliera, which takes “love” as its central theme—something Owens believes deserves renewed meaning today.

While retrospectives often evoke finality or decline, Owens embraces that notion with pride. The show traces his personal journey from the brash glamour of Hollywood Boulevard to the refinement of a Parisian museum—an interplay between European elegance and American directness that has long defined his work.

This contrast plays out in exposed skin framed by black leather, with studded straps draped like garlands in a neoclassical painting. The straps offer an excuse for self-decoration, adding a touch of drama and latent energy to the masculine body.

Heavy vegetable-tanned leather from Santa Croce sull’Arno is shredded, fringed, spiked, and zipped—crafted to sway, move, and breathe. Voluminous flight jackets and parkas are made from silk taffeta or GRS-certified industrial nylon canvas, woven in Como by a family-run mill. The nylon reflects Owens’s growing attention to sustainable sourcing.

Outerwear is paired with oversized cotton canvas shorts and padded orthopedic shoes with Velcro straps—nicknamed the “burrito sneakers” for their cocoon-like shape.

The collection also includes a leather jacket inspired by Suicide, the New York punk duo known for their raw sound. Owens reimagines their shredded aesthetic using thick leather tanned in Hyogo, Japan.

Another nostalgic nod comes from Terry-Ann Frencken, his first showroom model in 2002. Now a designer herself, she recreated a knit she once loved. A polaroid of her from that time appears on the first page of the retrospective catalog.

The show closed with Dido’s Lament by Klaus Nomi—an artist Owens calls the “legendary weirdo” who gave voice to the outsider in him.