by Ada Maria Francesca Romeo
Rick Owens has teamed up with Adidas to make what has become everyone’s dream amid this week’s record-breaking temperatures: built-in air conditioning for your outfit.
At his Spring/Summer 2027 show, held once again at the Palais de Tokyo, the Lord of Darkness unveiled “Stone,” a collection that doesn’t simply interpret our current reality—it is designed to survive it. The show also marks the return of Owens’ collaboration with Adidas, first launched in 2017, introducing its standout innovation: jackets equipped with Climacool technology that inflate through an internal ventilation and cooling system engineered to lower the wearer’s body temperature.
The timing couldn’t have been more fitting. As Paris baked under an extreme heatwave during Fashion Week, with temperatures reaching nearly 42°C (108°F), Owens moved his show from 5 p.m. to 10 a.m. to avoid the afternoon heat, ensuring safer conditions for both models and guests. It was a powerful reminder of how fashion is increasingly being forced to respond to the realities of the climate crisis, evolving from a purely aesthetic exercise into something functional, protective, and deeply relevant.
The collection remains unmistakably Rick Owens, but pushes his visual language into new territory. Rather than imagining a dystopian future, Owens acknowledges that dystopia has already arrived. His garments become tools of survival, conceived not for a fictional apocalypse but for a disaster that is, unfortunately, already unfolding. In this wardrobe, performance and protection are no longer technical features, they are central to the design itself.
Drawing heavily from the world of athletic training, the collection builds on a concept originally developed to regulate athletes’ body temperature before high-performance activity. Owens and adidas were not the first to explore this idea. In Japan, outdoor workers have long relied on fan-powered jackets to endure scorching summers, while last year Adidas introduced inflatable cooling garments for the Mercedes Formula 1 team. What Rick Owens has done, however, is bring this technology onto the runway for the first time, merging technical innovation with his unmistakably radical vision of high fashion.
Despite the collection’s experimental nature, Owens’ signature aesthetic remains instantly recognizable. Monumental silhouettes, exaggerated proportions, and bodies transformed by garments that resemble prosthetics, armor, or anatomical extensions continue to define his universe. This time, however, those armor-like pieces are no longer meant to evoke a post-apocalyptic future—they are designed to help us navigate the present.