Rick Owens AW26: ‘TOWER’ Ascends Into Apocalyptic Couture

style

Jan 27

Rick Owens’s AW26 ‘TOWER’ show at Palais de Tokyo: militant leather silhouettes, gothic outerwear and apocalyptic fog framing a radical, futuristic vision of Paris fashion.

In Paris, the high priest of goth futurism weaponizes fabric and fantasy into a militant vision of collective devotion.

Rick Owens’s AW26 collection, 'TOWER’, rose like a cathedral of fetishized futurism inside the Palais de Tokyo—dense fog, militant silhouettes, and extraterrestrial swagger. Models emerged through the haze like divine intruders, their hair sculpted into alien architectures, armor built from Japanese cowhide, Kevlar, and Himalayan wool. Owens fused the devotional with the industrial, crafting couture in the image of a world both collapsing and transcendent. It was militant, muscular, and knowingly absurd—authority distorted into beauty, optimism turned dangerous.

Rick Owens AW26 TOWER runway show at Palais de Tokyo in Paris with model in black leather armor walking through heavy fog

Model walks through heavy fog during the Rick Owens AW26 TOWER runway show at Palais de Tokyo in Paris

Fall’s material obsession reached fever pitch: gloss leather met boiled wool, shearling net, and 30-hour macramé. Paper-boat capes, Cousin Itt masks, and jagged outerwear rendered Paris’s most gothic designer at his most divine and deranged. The result? A sharp-edged sermon on the future of fashion—brutal, intelligent, ferociously hopeful. Rick weaponized fabric once again, proving apocalypse still has style.