Rick Owens titled his Fall/Winter 2026 menswear collection Tower, referencing “Temple of Love, Tower of Light.” The phrase suggests hope and devotion, yet Owens complicates the image. Towers also observe, control, and enforce. The collection operates within this tension, using contradiction as its organizing principle rather than resolution.
Early attempts at restraint appear in the removal of epaulets from bikers and outer shirts, a gesture toward distancing the clothes from overt military symbolism. That distance collapses quickly. The world intrudes, and parody becomes the only available response. Authority is exaggerated rather than concealed. Police boots expand into grotesque proportions, arriving in dense black or uneasy mauve, destabilizing conventional signals of power.
This logic extends into construction. Close-fitting coats wrap and tie the body like laboratory garments, suggesting regulation and containment. Their materials resist neutrality. Glossy bull leather is paired with Kevlar, a fiber engineered for protection rather than aesthetics. Woven in Como by a performance-focused mill, the Kevlar introduces an industrial realism that grounds the collection’s severity.
Transformation shapes the silhouette. Waxed cowhide outerwear, tanned in Himeji and assembled in Kanagawa, breaks into modular systems. Cropped jackets detach to expose elongated vests, shifting the hierarchy of the garment as it is worn. Form remains unstable, refusing a fixed authority.
Material narratives stretch across geographies. Thick felt cabans crafted in Bikaner use raw Himalayan wool, mixed by hand to create vein-like patterns that feel organic rather than decorative. Sack coats in alpaca and RWS-certified boiled wool, woven in Tuscany, emphasize traceability and process without moral spectacle. Mélange wools from Japan’s Bishū region and Bonotto in Veneto reinforce continuity with long-standing textile traditions.
Heavyweight black denim and industrial indigo canvas, sourced in Japan and washed in Veneto using reduced water processes, further embed sustainability at an infrastructural level rather than as narrative emphasis.
Moments of release appear in shaggy, netted shearling and goat hide jackets developed with London-based designer Straytukay. Their lightness disrupts the collection’s gravity without undermining its seriousness. Hand-crocheted silk-cashmere knits and labor-intensive macramé masks extend this focus on time, touch, and duration.
Photos: Owenscorp / Courtesy of Rick Owens
Casting: Angus Munro (AMC Casting)
Styling: Tyrone Dylan Susman
Hair: Duffy (Streeters)
Makeup: Daniel Sallstrom (MA World Group)
Production: La Mode en Images
Music: “Ultratonics 11” by Ryoji Ikeda
Mixed by: Jeff Judd
www.rickowens.eu
@rickowensonline
Highlights from the Collection
