Paco Rabanne the Spanish-born designer who was best known for his metallic and space age designs of the 1960s died on February 3rd, in Portsall, Brittany.
The death of Francisco Rabaneda y Cuervo, Paco Rabanne’s birth name, was confirmed by a spokesperson for Spanish group Puig, which controls the Paco Rabanne label he exited two decades ago.
Born in 1934 as Francisco Rabaneda y Cuervo just before the Spanish Civil War, his father, a Republican colonel who was a commander of the Guernica garrison, was shot dead by Francoist troops after they turned on him. His mother worked as the chief seamstress at Cristóbal Balenciaga’s first fashion house in the Basque country in Spain before moving the family to Paris.
In the French capital, the young Rabanne started making sketches for Dior and Givenchy in his spare time while studying for his architecture degree, and then worked at a concrete producer for 10 years. But his passion for design could not be dulled and he began making jewellery for luxury brands before starting his own fashion house in 1966.
His first collection, which he described as “unwearable dresses made of contemporary materials” were pieces made of strips of plastic linked with metal rings, worn by barefoot models at a presentation at the Georges V hotel in Paris.
His stardom reached further heights when in 1968 he designed the iconic Barbarella green outfit worn by Jane Fonda in the eponymous film. He also designed dress for James Bond movies, as well as Audrey Hepburn in Two for the Road, 1967. The Hollywood success helped Paco Rabanne to become one of the biggest fashion brands of his the time.
The designer teamed up with Spain’s Puig family in the late 1960s, launching perfumes that served as a springboard for the company’s international expansion.
After he retired in 1999, the brand stopped and was revived in 2011 with Manish Arora at the helm. The fashion house’s current creative director, Julien Dossena was appointed in 2013, continuing to build on the legacy of Rabanne and once again dressing the IT girls!
Rabanne – who had rearely been seen in public since retiring – was also nicknamed ‘Wacko Paco’ as he claimed to have lived multiple lives. Among them he was a Parisian prostitute during the reign of Louis XV and Tutankhamun’s killer. He also believed he was 78,000 years old, had met God on multiple occasions, been visited by aliens, and had sex with the Earth. He also predicted in 1999 that Paris would be destroyed.
In a statement on Paco Rabanne’s official Instagram, the brand hailed him as a “visionary” and said he was “among the most seminal fashion figures of the 20th Century”.
“His legacy will remain a constant source of inspiration,” it added.
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