Rick Owens’ Spring/Summer 2025 show at the Palais de Tokyo felt like a meeting of worlds, where ancient history collided with a distant, dystopian future. Owens, known for drawing on historical references, channeled the grandeur of Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations. The collection was filled with towering silhouettes—shoulders that rose like ziggurats, and robes that flowed like the Nile. The designs had a primitive, monolithic quality, but the muted tones and innovative materials made it clear this was not a mere tribute to the past. Rather, it was a reimagining of those civilizations through the lens of a future lost to ruin, where humanity clings to echoes of power and ritual.
As the models moved through a thick, enveloping fog, they seemed almost ghostly—figures that could have walked out of a forgotten empire. The interplay of sharp, geometric cuts and flowing fabrics created a hauntingly beautiful contrast. Then, in a moment of striking symbolism, gold-painted roses began to fall from above, their petals shimmering against the dark, almost somber palette of the garments. This unexpected infusion of luxury, in the form of delicate, gilded petals, seemed to play with the idea of decay and beauty, destruction and rebirth. The roses evoked the fleeting nature of opulence—like the golden treasures of ancient tombs, preserved for millennia but destined to fade.
In a sense, the show became a ceremony, a wedding between the ancient and the futuristic, where Owens played both priest and architect. The gold roses falling from the sky added an ironic twist, as though these long-lost civilizations were throwing a bridal bouquet to a future already crumbling under its own weight. This marriage of destruction and fragility, primal force and delicate beauty, is Owens' hallmark—a reminder that no matter how far we project ourselves into the future, we are always tethered to the bones of the past.
