Lauded rebel fashion designer Paco Rabanne dies at age 88
PARIS >> Paco Rabanne, the Spanish-born designer known for perfumes sold worldwide but who made his name with metallic spaceage fashions that put a bold, new edge on catwalks, has died, the group that owns his fashion house announced Friday.
“The House of Paco Rabanne wishes to honor our visionary designer and founder who passed away today at the age of 88. Among the most seminal fashion figures of the 20th century, his legacy will remain,” the statement from beauty and fashion company Puig said.
The newspaper Le Telegramme quoted the mayor of Vannes, David Robo, as saying that Rabanne died at his home in the Brittany region town of Portsall.
Rabanne's fashion house shows its collections in Paris and is scheduled to unveil the brand's latest readyto-wear designs during the upcoming Feb. 27-March 3 fashion week.
Rabanne was known as a rebel designer in a career that blossomed with his collaboration with the familyowned Puig, a Spanish company that now also owns other design houses, including Nina Ricci, Jean Paul Gaultier, Carolina Herrera and Dries Van Noten. The company also owns the fragrance brands Byredo and Penhaligon's.
“Paco Rabanne made transgression magnetic. Who else could induce fashionable Parisian women (to) clamor for dresses made of plastic and metal? Who but Paco Rabanne could imagine a fragrance called Calandre — the word means `automobile grill,' you know — and turn it into an icon of modern femininity?” the group's statement said.
Calandre perfume was launched in 1969, the first product by Puig in Spain, France and the United States, according to the company.
Born Francisco Rabaneda y Cuervo in 1934, the future designer fled the Spanish Basque country at age 5 during the Spanish Civil War and took the name of Paco Rabanne.
He studied architecture at Paris' Beaux Arts Academie before moving to couture, following in the steps of his mother, a couturier in Spain. He said she was jailed at one point for being dressed in a “scandalous” fashion.
Rabanne sold accessories to well-known designers before launching his own collection.
He titled the first collection presented under his own name “12 unwearable dresses in contemporary materials.” His innovative outfits were made of various kinds of metal, including his famous use of mail, the chain-like material associated with Medieval knights.
Coco Chanel reportedly called Rabanne “the metallurgist of fashion.”
French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, saluted “an uncommon artist who blew the wind of renewal into the world of haute couture,” his office said.