![](https://greg.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/rick-owens-ss25-palais-de-tokyo-scr-1-1024x575.jpg)
The streets were scouted. The fashion schools were emptied. The gazar was unfurled. The skaters were evicted. And Rick Owens’ Spring/Summer ’25 men’s collection processed momentously around the courtyard of the 1937 Palais de Tokyo— twice—to a very extended remix of the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th.
![](https://greg.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/rick-owens-ss25-palais-de-tokyo-scr-2-1024x576.jpg)
In the description on his YouTube channel, Owens cites as inspiration his own youthful flight to Hollywood Boulevard, Jack Smith & Kenneth Anger, and “THE LOST HOLLYWOOD OF PRE-CODE BLACK AND WHITE BIBLICAL EPICS, MIXING ART DECO, LURID SIN AND REDEEMING MORALITY.”
![](https://greg.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/rick-owens-ss25-palais-de-tokyo-scr-4-1024x574.jpg)
Which sounds and looks like Cecil B. DeMille’s original 1923 version of The Ten Commandments, with better costumes.
![](https://greg.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/demille-ten-commandments-1923-scr-1024x771.jpg)
And, ngl, it also sounds and looks a lot like Intolerance (1916), D.W. Griffith’s unwieldy and obsequious sequel to his breakout klanfic hit, The Birth of A Nation (1915), with much better costumes.
![](https://greg.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/griffith-intolerance-scr-1916-1024x765.jpg)
The creation of Griffith’s spectacle, from the cast of thousands to the mammoth set built on Hollywood & Sunset, was a centerpiece of Anger’s book, Hollywood Babylon.
“EXPRESSING OUR INDIVIDUALITY IS GREAT BUT SOMETIMES EXPRESSING OUR UNITY AND RELIANCE ON EACH OTHER IS A GOOD THING TO REMEMBER TOO… ESPECIALLY IN THE FACE OF THE PEAK INTOLERANCE WE ARE EXPERIENCING IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW…” also wrote Owens.
I am not really sure how the master’s spectacularly propagandistic tools are going to dismantle his ideological house. But maybe it’s the show’s second lap, where each model walks again solo. I do want one of those jackets, though.