Rick Owens looks to Olympics with gymnastic show at Paris fashion week

Olympic excellence has – understandably – been something of a theme at the menswear fashion shows in Paris this week. The latest to platform the impressive power of athletes was Rick Owens. For his spring/summer 2025 show in the grounds of the Palais de Tokyo on Thursday, he included what he called a “gymnast bouquet” – a steel structure featuring three gymnasts holding poses, carried by nine young men in shorts and vests.

Owens is a designer more usually associated with a gothy, dark aesthetic than the world of sports so this was a different take on what might be seen at the opening ceremony in a few weeks’ time. But the show also had a heartwarming story. Rather than professionals, the models here were largely students and staff from fashion colleges across Paris.

If fashion shows typically feature one model at a time wearing a different outfit, here groups of about 20 models reached the runway together, each wearing the same outfit. The black Owens usually loves was replaced by an entirely white and ivory collection. With Owens’ otherworldly aesthetic, the effect was slightly sci-fi – especially with outfits featuring Cleopatra-like headpieces, and some models with balaclavas and capes.

This show comes after two previous collections shown in the hushed and minimal environs of Owens’ house. In a statement shared with press, he said that the bigger space of the Palais de Tokyo was a reaction. “I felt bad about making attendance so restricted so this time around I wanted to welcome everyone,” he wrote. Hence, asking fashion schools for “men and women who would like to walk in this white satin army of love.”.

Owens said the show was about unity: the gymnast at the top of the bouquet held a flag with a picture of people holding hands. “Expressing our individuality is great but sometimes expressing our unity and reliance on each other is a good thing to remember too,” he wrote, “especially in the face of the peak intolerance we are experiencing in the world right now.”

Owens is a designer loved by fashion insiders for the way he practises what he preaches – the fact that he both designs and wears extreme items like plexiglass platform boots, for example. In line with this, a collection about unity was full of collaborators, all name checked in Owens’ statement.

The gymnastic poses were the work of choreographer and artist Ylva Falk, who worked on a show with similar gravity-defying feats in 2015. Robes were made by Dafne Balatsos, who the designer has worked with for 25 years. And knitwear was the work of Tanja Vidic, a recent fashion graduate from Slovenia who makes the most imaginative DIY knits I have ever seen.”