Paco Rabanne, the Spanish-born designer known for his metal and plastic creations, has died at age 88 in Portsall, France.
Born in 1934, Rabanne, whose real name was Francisco Rabaneda-Cuervo, moved from Spain to France with his mother and sisters after Franco's men assassinated his father. In the early '50s, he enrolled at Paris' Ecole des Beaux Arts to study architecture.
Soon after that, he started producing accessories for fashion houses such as André Courrèges, Pierre Cardin, Balenciaga (Rabanne's mother was a dress maker there) and Givenchy, while Emmanuelle Khanh often included his accessories in her collections.
Rabanne became popular in 1965 as a jewellery designer: he mainly used plastic in his creations (especially Rhodoid) in geometric shapes and in a variety of colours.
He presented his first collection entitled "12 Robes Importables en Matériaux Contemporains" ("12 Unwearable Dresses in Contemporary Materials") in 1966 at the George V Hotel in Paris. His creations showed he was more an engineer and an architect than a conventional fashion designer, reasons that prompted Coco Chanel to call him "a metal worker".
In 1966, after using plastic for his dresses, Rabanne moved onto metal disks, linking them via tiny rings and started making aluminum dresses that incorporated hammered or studded elements.
Audrey Hepburn donned one of the chain mail dresses he created around this time in Stanley Donen's film Two for the Road (1967).
In 1966 Emmanuelle Khanh, Christiane Bailly, Michèle Rosier and Paco Rabanne were invited to a ready-to-wear show in New York during the "April in Paris" charity ball, organized to bring French designers to the United States.
Among the other creations showcased there were a quilted dress with a magnifying mirror on the belly button by Khanh, metal yokes on brown silk by Bailly, an entirely silver vinyl collection by Michèle Rosier and shredded leather and plastic dresses and hoods with Rhodoid accessories by Rabanne. One of the most striking designs presented at the event was a leather and plastic outfit by Rabanne, showcased under a trompe l'oeil reproduction of the Arc du Carrousel with futuristic music in the background composed by Quasar Khanh with the National Center of Experimental Music in Paris.
Rabanne's creations, often filed under the label "Space Age designs", were a provocation that questioned the future of fashion, wondering what would happen one day to proper fabrics and textiles. Though not as comfortable as ordinary garments made of fabrics, Rabanne's designs were created with dynamism in mind since they were perfectly articulated.
Yet, Rabanne was often criticised for his metal pieces: William Klein's cult film Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? (1966) opens for example with a runway that satirises metal dresses.
At the very beginning of the film Klein's camera follows the last minute preparations of a catwalk show by designer Isidore Ducasse, who is going to present a series of aluminum dresses that are supposed to form the wardrobe for the nuclear age woman. Ducasse's unwearable and bizarre outfits end up passing for the works of a genius, winning the approval of mighty fashion editor Miss Maxwell, something that prompts Ducasse to reveal what he will do next - the same collection, but in copper.
As the years passed, Rabanne actually went on to experiment with more materials, moving from plastics and metal to leather, paper and fur, even though he mainly remained known for his chain mail pieces.
In a 1967 interview published on Marie Claire the designer stated his clothes reminded him of weapons, explaining, "When they are fastened, they make a sound like the trigger of a revolver."
There was actually somebody who accessorised his designs with futuristic yet cartoonish guns and rifles - Jane Fonda in Roger Vadim's Barbarella (1968). Rabanne created Jane Fonda's costumes for this film, including the chain mail cropped top, pants and cape and the green ensemble with plastic elements.
Spanish group Puig controls the Paco Rabanne fashion house and fragrance business since 1968. The seminal fragrance Calandre was launched in 1969, followed in the '70s by Paco Rabanne Pour Homme.
Rabanne retired from fashion in 1999, after his last couture show in July that year: since then he stopped appearing in public, but focused on other personal passions, namely astrology and the occult.
He actually became notorious for his prophecies: in his 1994 book "Has The Countdown Begun?" he predicted Armageddon to happen in 1996; then he announced the Mir space station would plummet to Earth and devastate Paris during the solar eclipse of 11th August 1999 in his "Fire From Heaven". Luckily for us, Rabanne was a better fashion designer than a clairvoyant.
In 2010 there was a retrospective entitled "Paco Rabanne, Designer and Rebel" at Condes Castro Guimarães Museum in Lisbon and the Puig group eventually relaunched the fashion house in 2011, with Indian designer Manish Arora as Creative Director. The first collection Arora did was a tribute to rabanne's lexicon, with some metallic designs that called to mind the "Sound Sculpture Robe" by French brothers Francois and Bernard Baschet featured in the opening scenes of William Klein's Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? (1966).
French-born Julien Dossena has been leading the fashion house since 2013: in his collections he has so far rediscovered Rabanne's trademark inserts chained by metal links or used a pliable version of his chainmail. Besides, Dossena was also inspired by Victor Vasarely in a more recent collection. Last year The Corner Shop in Selfridges Oxford Street, London, launched an event entitled "Universe", offering the chance to rediscover Vasarely's artworks and shop Paco Rabanne's collection inspired by them.
Rabanne's fragrances remain the most successful side of the business: he was one of the first designers to launch a fragrance online in the mid-1990s - XS Pour Elle. The brand is actually more famous for its male scents: the most recent one is Phantom, a fragrance designed with the assistance of the AI and with ingredients selected with the help of neuroscientists who demonstrated they can activate brain areas associated to seduction, alertness and energy.
Also Rabanne's fragrances tend to have a connection with technology to reflect the designer's passion for innovative styles: the 100 ml and 150 ml robot-shaped bottles of Phantom include in the caps a contactless communication NFC chip that allows to access with a smartphone to interactive filters, personalised playlists and interactive games. In July 2022, Paco Rabanne launched a women's fragrance, Fame, robot-shaped as well, but dressed in Rabanne's iconic chain-mail dress.
A true revolutionary and a visionary, Rabanne embodied the spirit of experimentation of the '60s and inspired many designers who came after him and costume designers as well: some of the costumes in Mario Bava's Danger: Diabolik (1968) by Luciana Marinucci in collaboration with Giulio Coltellacci (Eva's metal grommet jacket and bikini and Valmont's girlfriend top made of red plastic triangles linked together) point indeed at Rabanne's style.
Rabanne's legacy continues nowadays in the collections of those designers, such as Kei Ninomiya, using innovative and unusual materials or looking for alternative solutions to traditional stitching techniques.
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