Paco Rabanne in the finale of his Fall/Winter 2004/2005 fashion show. Getty Images:
The fashion world is mourning one of the most daring designers of the Parisian scene, who died on Friday at the age of 88.
He was born on February 18, 1934 under the sky of the small town of Pasaya on the Basque coast of Spain. He died this Friday in Portsol, Brittany, aged 88, leaving behind a creative legacy often described as extravagant, visionary or even avant-garde. Coco Chanel said about him that he is a “metallurgist”. Others called him a futurist, a mystic, an architect, a prophet, an astrologer. The man responded, and not just in his appearance as a monk or as an unconventional tailor who made welding machines and pliers, his own threads and needles to fashion his metal garments. He believed in reincarnation, numerology and the theories of Nostradamus, and in turn announced the destruction of the MIR space station in Paris or the apocalypse in southwestern France, which was scheduled for August 11, 1999. Wandering mystics professed on televisions he was awarded the cross of the media.
Fashion designer Paco Rabanne at home in 1981. Getty Images:
Clothing architect
In addition to being a spiritual man who claimed to receive messages from the universe, Paco Rabanne embodied a free and experimental fashion made from completely new materials that influenced a whole generation of couturiers such as Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen or Nicolas Ghesquière, who were fascinated by it. the avant-garde approach and its bold use of metal and plastic. Paco Rabanne didn’t think clothes should be designed with fabric. We owe him especially the first chain dresses or dresses with an aluminum plate, the first models of which weighed several kilograms. This didn’t stop them from being worn by 1960s fashion stars Françoise Hardy, Jane Birkin and Brigitte Bardot, among others. She also has the very sexy wardrobe of Barbarella, aka Jane Fonda, a sci-fi heroine with a “light” dress and loose morals for the times.
Her attraction to clothes came about by chance when she financed her architectural studies at the Beaux-Arts by drawing fashion sketches. Paco Rabanne moved to Paris at the age of 17. Raised in Morlay, Brittany. He was 5 years old when the family moved there, fleeing the Spanish Civil War, after his father was shot dead by Francoists in 1936. In addition to his sketches published in the press, he tries his hand at creating rhododial accessories (earrings and glasses), and immediately launches his own fashion brand under his own name. Created for liberated women, her armor dresses are eye-catching, they are written with an architectural approach that will make her DNA. In 1999, Paco Rabanne gradually stepped away from fashion before hanging up for good in 2009, the year of his last ready-to-wear show. Today, the brand continues its journey with Julien Dossena at the helm.
Source: Le Figaro
