Spanish fashion designer Paco Rabanne, famous for his metal dresses, died Friday at the age of 88 in France, in Brittany, announced to AFP the Catalan group Puig, which owns the brand bearing his name.
“With deep sadness, Puig announces the death of Paco Rabanne,” said a press release, confirming information from the regional daily. The Telegram. The designer died in the village of Portsall where he lived, a spokesman told AFP.
“A major fashion personality, his vision was bold, revolutionary and provocative, conveyed by a unique aesthetic. He will remain an important source of inspiration for Puig’s fashion and fragrance teams, who constantly work together to express the radically modern codes of Mr. Paco Rabanne,” said Marc Puig, CEO of the group, quoted in the press release. .
Jose Manuel Albesa, president of the “beauty and fashion” division of Puig, for his part paid tribute to the “radical and rebellious spirit” of the designer.
“Who else could incite fashion-conscious Parisiennes to demand plastic and metal dresses? Who else but Paco Rabanne could imagine a perfume called Grille — the word means “car grill” — and make her an icon of modern femininity? “, he added.
Paco Rabanne, whom Coco Chanel called the “metallurgist”, occupied a special place in the small world of fashion, where his tools were pliers and his fabrics were metal.
Throughout his career, the couturier, who assiduously practiced esotericism, also stood out for a number of eccentric statements and hazardous predictions. Which did not prevent the man from being funny and endearing.
“I have been dealing with esotericism since my earliest childhood. My mother was very pragmatic, but my grandmother was a shaman. She introduced me to the knowledge of the world very early. Fashion allowed me to earn a living, but it was not really my center of interest, ”he confided in an interview in 2005.
Born on February 18, 1934 in the Spanish Basque Country, in San Sebastian where his mother was first hand at Cristobal Balenciaga, Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris, architecture section. His father, General Rabaneda-Postigo, who commanded the Guernica garrison, was shot by Franco’s soldiers in 1936. In 1939, the family took refuge in France.
Paco Rabanne began his career by creating accessories, jewelry, ties, buttons that he offered to Dior, Saint-Laurent, Cardin. Before embarking on fashion in turn to bring it to life in line with new materials and techniques.
In 1966, he presented his collection made up of “12 importable dresses in contemporary materials” in a provocative parade where black models, dancing barefoot, paraded for the first time. The success was immediate, but his first models weighed 30 kg and bruised the flesh.
The same year, singer Françoise Hardy made the cover of She in one of his white plastic rectangle swimsuits.
“Astonish us! »
In his Parisian studio, dressed summer and winter alike in a dark smock over matching trousers, Paco Rabanne knits mink, cuts foxtails into slices to make flowers, uses rhodoïd, patchwork of laser discs, metal jersey and chainmail.
In 1968, he signed a license contract with the Puig family, Barcelona perfumers, for the exploitation of perfumes and launched Grille, the first in a successful series. Since 1986, the Puig group, which also owns Nina Ricci, the Carolina Herrera brands and Prada and Comme des Garçons perfumes, has owned the entire house.
The couturier also works for the cinema by participating in the creation of costumes for films such as Two or three things I know about her by Jean-Luc Godard or even Barbarella by Roger Vadim.
Believing in reincarnation, half-medium, half-preacher, he willingly recounts having, the first time, made love with the Earth by digging a hole in the ground. He claims to have had several lives (including that of a whore from the Palais Royal, mistress of Louis XV), to have seen God and received visits from extraterrestrials. In 1999, he announced in one of his books the destruction of Paris by the fall of the Mir station based on a very personal reading of the prophecies of Nostradamus.
The same year, the house ceased its haute couture activity to refocus on ready-to-wear.
Gradually taking the distance, Paco Rabanne continued to appear in the juries of fashion festivals where he liked to deliver his message to the younger generation.
“We pass the baton to you. Be bold as we have all been in our time with Pierre Cardin, Saint Laurent or Courrèges! Dare again and again! Surprise us! Clear constantly! To break through and win, we don’t have the right to copy,” he said.