The palace doors flew open. It was him. It was Rick Owens, the American-born designer known to his fans as the Lord of Darkness. And he was dressed: like Rick Owens. Long black coat. Tall black boots. Long black hair. The slanting early-evening sun lit his face. I should mention it was uncommonly gorgeous in Paris that day. It was wintertime, but the day was a little telegram from spring. Light glinted off golden domes. Giant clouds were letting big shafts of light through. Owens put on his sunglasses and looked out at everything, as if Paris were a farm he was glad he'd been wise enough to purchase.

I should also mention that I'd been late to meet him, there at the Petit Palais, where he was going to show me his favorite paintings. Late enough that the museum guard wouldn't let me in. (“But I need to meet up with a friend inside!” I told the guard. “Ohhhh”—he made a sad face—“ton ami!”)

I walked up to Owens already apologizing. But it seemed he'd forgotten our appointment entirely. He smiled sweetly, looking, if anything, slightly abashed to have been caught enjoying himself like that, in an unguardedly sunny way. I explained the whole catastrophe and he laughed.

I remembered I'd brought a present for him, a red wooden fountain pen made by a company called Lamy. Owens is married to the famous art- and fashion-world figure Michèle Lamy—the couple have been at the heart of avant-garde Paris for more than a decade, ever since they arrived here from Los Angeles. I figured they'd both be delighted by the coincidence of the name. “Yeah,” he said, not smirking but sort of politely half smiling, “this is the first thing that comes up when you type that name into Google.” He handed the pen back to me.

He actually handed it back to me.

Note now: He had been sweet (about my lateness) when another man would have been a dick. He had been truthful and direct (about my sad, apologetic gift) when another man would have been falsely sweet or crypto-condescending or else indifferent.

“Did you get to see some good art?” I asked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” he said. “I had an experience that completely changed everything I thought I knew as a designer. To tell you the truth, it sort of kills me that you weren't there.”

I tried to make my cheek muscles hold, but my face collapsed into what I knew was a stricken look, the face of someone suddenly sick in the bowels.

He smiled again. He'd been joking, of course.

“No,” he said, “but I did see a painting that gave me a thought for where I might go with my next collection.”

“Serious this time?”

“Yes,” he said. There had been a special exhibition of paintings made in Paris by Dutch artists. “I saw this incredible ruff,” he said. He pulled out his iPhone and showed me a portrait of a woman sitting and several close-ups of an extraordinary white garment she was wearing. A dress made of what appeared to be thousands of folds of white muslin, cinched in so tightly at the waist it appeared, at just that zone of her torso, to have become a corset. The dress exploded at the neckline into this ruff, which had captivated Owens.

“I've been doing a blob thing for a while now,” he said. “Bulges and blobs.” It was true. Many of his latest pieces seemed to have grown tumors. The clothes had swallowed their own fanny packs and wore them like deer lumps in a python. They were futuristic, but from a Rube Goldberg future where we had to turn absurd to survive.