Paco Rabanne created clothes from metal and recycled household waste. He designed a perfume that translates to “radiator grille” and claimed to have lived multiple lives. Now the fashion designer and esoteric has died.
Metal plates, paper and recycled household waste: For Paco Rabanne there was no material that would have been unsuitable for his fashion. Because if one day there would be 20 billion people on earth, there would be no more wool, he once said. The Spanish fashion and perfume creator has now died at the age of 88, as the cosmetics group Puig confirmed to the German Press Agency. According to media reports, he died in Brittany near Brest, where he also lived.
Jane Fonda wore his costumes in “Barbarella.”
Rabanne was an eccentric. He became known in the 1960s for his extravagant clothing designs. Unlike other fashion designers at the time, he worked less with satin or velvet and instead played with materials such as aluminum or plastic. In the science fiction film “Barbarella” Jane Fonda wore his costumes and made him world famous. Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Birkin, Brigitte Bardot, Audrey Hepburn and Françoise Hardy also proudly wore his iconic leather, paper and aluminum fabrics.
He was born Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo on February 18, 1934 in San Sebastián, Spain. His father was killed by Franco troops in the Spanish Civil War. His mother worked for fashion designer Cristóbal Balenciaga. At the end of the 1930s she fled with him to France. There he studied architecture and designed belts, handbags and jewelery on the side, which he sold to leading designers of the time such as Hubert de Givenchy, Pierre Cardin, Alain Courrèges and Nina Ricci. The success prompted him to abandon his career plans as an architect to devote himself exclusively to fashion.
A radical, rebellious spirit
In 1966, Paco Rabanne presented his first haute couture collection entitled “Twelve Unwearable Dresses Made of Contemporary Materials” in the Parisian luxury hotel “Georges V”. He founded his eponymous company, which has been fully owned by the Spanish cosmetics group Puig for several decades. With no less success, he created his first perfume “Calandre”, which was followed by many other fragrances such as “Phantom”, “One Million” and “Pure XS”.
“Who but Paco Rabanne could dream up a fragrance called ‘Calandre’ – the word means grille, you know – and make it an icon of modern femininity? That radical, rebellious spirit set him apart: there is only one Rabanne,” shared Puig to his death with.
In 1999 he left the world of haute couture and devoted himself more and more to the esoteric. He announced the end of the world by the year 2000. The couturier was convinced Paris would burn after the MIR space station fell on the French capital during a solar eclipse. He claimed to have seen God. He published several books about his paranormal experiences and claimed to have seen aliens, murdered Tutankhamun and had multiple lives. (dpa)