Recently Rick Owens, a self-proclaimed “sissy kid” from Porterville, Calif., turned underground Los Angeles designer turned Parisian fashion dark lord, opened an OnlyFans account — for his feet.
The nominal motivation for the account was a show. Not the epic men’s show/quasi-religious experience he held Thursday, but a career retrospective at the Palais Galliera. Entitled “Temple of Love,” it places his futuristic, freak-meets-goddess aesthetic convincingly in the pantheon of such fashion greats as Azzedine Alaïa and Mario Fortuny and confirms his place as the most inside outsider in fashion.
But having reached that pinnacle got him thinking about decline, which got him thinking about the Countess of Castiglione, one of Napoleon’s mistresses and a celebrated beauty who eventually retreated to an apartment on Place Vendôme and, Mr. Owens said, “only ever did portraits of her feet.” So he decided to do it his way, with all the profits going to a refuge for trans youth.
Sex and death are an integral part of the Owens shtick. So are wide-ranging classical allusions, beauty and generosity, all of it wrapped up in a complicated battle of grandiose silhouettes and far-flung references that gets resolved in some of the most gorgeous, original clothes being made today.
That is why the sweeping display of the museum show is bookended by two small rooms. One features a rumpled bed that is a replica of the bed in Mr. Owens’s home. The other, which comes with a warning label, features a number of videos, including one of Michèle Lamy, Mr. Owens’s wife, muse, business partner and all-around enabler on her 80th birthday, pulling down her underpants and sitting squash on top of her chocolate birthday cake.
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