Rick Owens fashion show in Paris, Fall Winter 2026 Ready To Wear Fashion Week Photo by Valerio Mezzanotti
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On March 5, Rick Owens unveiled his Fall/Winter 2026 collection during Paris Fashion Week.
Inside the smoke-filled halls of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, models slowly emerged onto the runway. Their pace felt less like a march and more like a pilgrimage. What Rick Owens presented this season was the second chapter of “TOWER” — a meditation on a “prayer for love and hope. And strength and protection.”
The show opened with dresses constructed from glossy bull leather, boiled wool, and Kevlar. Kevlar is a fiber with tensile strength about five times greater than steel, typically used in protective gear. By transforming it into garments, Rick Owens poses a quiet but powerful question: Is clothing meant to decorate the body, or to defend it?
Outerwear composed of layered cropped jackets and elongated vests formed tower-like silhouettes. Waxy cowhide, alpaca, and RWS-certified boiled wool enveloped the body. Monumental hoods, sculptural capes, and voluminous felt coats followed one after another. As the looks progressed, the runway began to resemble a procession of warriors. Yet within that strength, there was also a subtle trace of sorrow — the quiet gravity of those who must bear armor.
Refinement rarely exists only on the surface. Part of the weight this collection carries lies in the origins of its materials.
Melange wool was woven in Japan’s Bishū region, renowned for its textile tradition. Indigo canvas was sourced in Japan before being treated in a wash house in Veneto, Italy, where its distinctive texture was developed. Meanwhile, the 8mm-thick felt jackets were crafted in an atelier in Bikaner, Rajasthan, in northern India, where Himalayan wool is blended by hand to create organic, vein-like patterns across the fabric’s surface.
The hands of artisans from around the world quietly intersect within a single garment. Rick Owens’ work is often described as futuristic, yet beneath its stark forms lies a deep stratigraphy of craft and time.
A more intimate reference runs through the collection: the legendary actress Marlene Dietrich.
Rick Owens reflects on her life in three stages. First, the era in which she shone as a provocative and magnetic sexual icon. Second, the period during wartime when she became a symbol of duty and service. And finally, the late years of her career — the tightly controlled cabaret performances staged with only a sheer dress, a vast white coat, and a single pink spotlight.
Her legendary swansdown coat from those final performances reappears here, reinterpreted as a long-haired goat leather coat. Not as decoration, but as a reinterpretation of memory.
For Rick Owens, Dietrich represents “a very attractive mix of morality and artifice with a strong sense of responsibility and grit.” Her presence resonates naturally with the emotional core of this collection.
In a world defined by uncertainty, what can clothing say?
Rick Owens’ answer is both direct and complex. To protect — but also to preserve beauty and sensuality within that protection. The women who walked the runway embodied more than strength; they carried the quiet awareness of their own power.
“TOWER” stood as both altar and armor — a structure rising from the body to protect love and hope. Through the haze of the runway, that tower quietly emerged as a symbol of what this moment in time demands most.
All looks from the Rick Owens Fall/Winter 2026 collection can be viewed in the gallery below.
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