Paco Rabanne

Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo (18 February 1934 – 3 February 2023), more commonly known under the pseudonym of Paco Rabanne (French: [pako ʁaban]; Spanish: [ˈpako raˈβan]), was a Spanish [1] fashion designer.

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Rabaneda and the second or maternal family name is Cuervo.

Paco Rabanne
Rabanne in 2006
Born
Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo

(1934-02-18)18 February 1934
Pasaia, Spain
Died3 February 2023(2023-02-03) (aged 88)
Ploudalmézeau, France
Nationality
  • Spanish
  • French
Educationl'École Nationale des Beaux-Arts
OccupationFashion designer
Websitewww.pacorabanne.com

Rabanne rose to prominence as an enfant terrible of the fashion world in the 1960s with his use of unconventional materials such as metal and plastic in his clothing, and for his incorporation of futuristic elements in his designs, gaining notoriety for his space-age style. He collaborated with a range of iconic fashion houses and designed costumes for films. Rabanne was also the recipient of several awards, including the Legion of Honour, which recognised his contributions to the arts and fashion.

In addition to his fashion work, Rabanne was known for his fragrances. He created a number of highly successful scents, including Paco Rabanne Pour Homme, 1 Million, and Lady Million.

Early life and education

Rabanne was born on 18 February 1934 in the Basque town of Pasaia, Gipuzkoa province.[2] His father, a Republican Colonel, was executed by Francoist troops during the Spanish Civil War.[2] Rabanne's mother was a chief seamstress at Cristóbal Balenciaga's first couture house in Donostia, Basque Country, and in 1939 she moved Rabanne's family to France after he opened Balenciaga in Paris.[2] In mid-1950s Paris, while studying architecture at l'École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Rabanne earned money making fashion sketches for Dior and Givenchy, and shoe sketches for Charles Jourdan. He nevertheless subsequently took a job with France's foremost developer of reinforced concrete, Auguste Perret, working there for over ten years.[3]

Career

Fashion
1967 Rabanne metal and sequin swimsuit
1971 Rabanne metal mail outfit in a fashion show, Germany
Rabanne's 1 Million eau de toilette spray

He started his career in fashion by creating jewellery for Givenchy, Dior, and Balenciaga and founded his own fashion house in 1966.[4] He used unconventional material such as metal, paper, and plastic for his metal couture and outlandish and flamboyant designs.[5] For the debut of his namesake brand in 1966, he presented "Manifesto: 12 unwearable dresses in contemporary materials".[1] Although he didn't consider himself a futurist, Rabanne's most famous contribution to the fashion industry was arguably his futurist space age designs.[6] People Magazine journalist Hedy Philips noted that these space age designs "turned the fashion world upside down".[7]

Rabanne is known for designing the iconic green dress,[8] as well as the other costumes,[9] worn by Jane Fonda in the 1968 science-fiction film Barbarella.[10][11] The singer song-writer Françoise Hardy was a big fan of Rabanne's designs.[12] For Tour 1996 and the resulting Live à Bercy album, singer Mylène Farmer commissioned Rabanne to create her live-concert stage costumes.[13][14]

In 1966, Rabanne was named one of the "fashion revolutionaries" in New York by Women's Wear Daily, alongside Edie Sedgwick, Tiger Morse, Pierre Cardin, Baby Jane Holzer, Rudi Gernreich, André Courrèges, Emanuel Ungaro, Yves Saint Laurent, and Mary Quant.[15]

In November 2010, Rabanne was awarded the Legion of Honour by France's minister of culture, Frédéric Mitterrand. During the award ceremony, Mitterrand highlighted Rabanne's early work, particularly his first collection of "12 unwearable dresses".[16]

Fragrance

In 1968, Rabanne began collaborating with the fragrance[17] company Puig, which resulted in the company marketing his perfumes.[18] In 1969, his first – and arguably most popular – scent, called Calandre, would be released.[7] In 1976, the company built a perfume factory in Chartres, France.[19] In the 1980s, in Brazil, his men's perfume brand registration was forfeited due to a court judgement that the brand was never officially present in Brazil despite heavy advertising and a strong local awareness. The court reasoned that because Puig's local distributor was smuggling perfume into Brazil, the company could not show proof of payment of import duties. It took six or seven years to recover his brand name in Brazil.[20] In 1994, Rabanne first released his scent called XS.[21] The fragrance 1 Million, released in 2008, was the last scent that Rabanne played a role in developing[22] and is considered to be one of the most popular men's fragrances worldwide.[23] Lady Million, a fragrance recognisable by its distinctive golden bottles, also held a strong presence in the market as of 2023.[24]

Other interests

In 1994, Rabanne wrote the book, Has the Countdown Begun? Through Darkness to Enlightenment.[25]

In 2005, Rabanne opened the first exhibition of his drawings in Moscow, Russia. His reasoning for showing the drawings then was, "I am 72 years old, and I wanted to present my drawings this year before disappearing from this planet. I have not shown them to anyone except Salvador Dalí 30 years ago, who told me to keep going." One of the black-and-white sketches depicts a child letting go of a dove and a white balloon into the sky, which he said was inspired by the commemoration ceremony for the 2004 Beslan attack in Beslan, North Ossetia, in which 319 hostages were killed, including 186 children, 12 servicemen, and 31 hostage-takers. Rabanne wanted the money that the drawing sold for to go to the women of Beslan.[26]

In 2006, Rabanne visited Kyiv, Ukraine. He summed up the changes since the Orange Revolution: "Ukraine reminds me of a flower unfolding its petals before my very eyes."[27]

In 2011 Manish Arora was named chief designer of Rabanne menswear. Then in 2012 he was replaced in that role by the German fashion designer Lydia Maurer .[28] In mid-2013, Belgian and former Balenciaga designer Julien Dossena was appointed creative director of womenswear at Paco Rabanne. Dossena's designs were subsequently praised by fashion critics.[29][30] The ateliers are located in Paris above the flagship store of Nina Ricci, another Puig fashion company, on Avenue Montaigne. In January 2016, a new store opened on Paris' Rue Cambon, following the closure of the remaining Paco Rabanne boutiques more than ten years earlier.[31]

A re-edit of his classic "le 69" bag was relaunched by Comme des Garçons.[32][33]

Personal life and death

Eccentricities

Rabanne gained notoriety for making eccentric public statements. He claimed he had lived several lives (including that of a prostitute in the time of Louis XV), to have known Jesus in a previous life, to have seen God three times, to have been visited by extraterrestrials, to have murdered Tutankhamun,[34] and to be 75,000 years old.[2][35]

In 1999, he announced that, at the age of seventeen, he had visions of Parisians in flames throwing themselves into the Seine and that after studying other concordant prophecies, he came to the conclusion that the Mir space station was going to crash in France at the time of the solar eclipse of 11 August 1999, its debris causing thousands of deaths in Paris and in the Gers region.[36] On 10 May 1999, he publicly vowed not to make any more predictions if Mir did not crash into Paris on 11 August 1999.[37] However, he claimed to have had an apparition of the Virgin Mary telling him to continue the predictions.[34]

Death

Rabanne died at home in Portsall, Ploudalmézeau, France, on 3 February 2023, fifteen days short of his 89th birthday.[2][38]

See also

References
  1. "storypacorabanne | Paco Rabanne". 27 April 2020. Archived from the original on 27 April 2020. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
  2. Friedman, Vanessa (3 February 2023). "Paco Rabanne, Couturier of the Space Age, Dies at 88". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 February 2023.
  3. "Paco Rabanne Fashion History". Heroine. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
  4. "Paco Rabanne: Retro Futurist Fashion". escamastudio. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
  5. "MFIT- Love and War- Paco Rabanne". 3 September 2006. Archived from the original on 3 September 2006. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
  6. Owoseje, Toyin; Siad, Amaud (3 February 2023). "Paco Rabanne, Spanish fashion designer known for his Space Age creations, dies at 88". CNN. Retrieved 3 February 2023.
  7. Philips, Hedy (3 February 2023). "Spanish Fashion Designer Paco Rabanne Dies at Age 88". People. Retrieved 3 February 2023.
  8. Walker, Harriet (12 October 2019). "How Julien Dossenna rebooted Paco Rabanne". The Times. Retrieved 7 February 2023.
  9. "Barbarella". Getty Images. Retrieved 7 February 2023.
  10. Leung, Yasmine (3 February 2023). "Who Owns Paco Rabanne Now? Visionary Designer Dies Aged 88". HITC. Retrieved 3 February 2023.
  11. Goodfellow, Melanie (3 February 2023). "Paco Rabanne Dies: Spanish 'Barbarella' Fashion Designer Was 88". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 3 February 2023.
  12. "Paco Rabanne, with Francoise Hardy, Salvador Dali and Amanda Lear in Paco Rabanne, In France, On May 19, 1968". Getty Images. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
  13. Lacroix, Marion Raynaud (3 October 2018). "tout ce que la mode doit à mylène farmer". Retrieved 27 April 2020.
  14. Woolnough, Damien. "Paco Rabanne's third reinvention: Julien Dossena". ELLE. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
  15. "Revolution In Fashion Reaction In New York: These Were The Revolutionaries". Women’s Wear Daily. Vol. 112, no. 74. 14 April 1966. pp. 4–5. ProQuest 1564944345.
  16. "Paco Rabanne Named Officer of Legion of Honor". Women's Wear Daily. 17 November 2010. Retrieved 6 February 2023.
  17. "Paco Rabanne Pour Homme EAU de Toilette | Paco Rabanne".
  18. La Vanguardia, 9 October 2011, Supplement Diners, page 14
  19. "To be multinational in Spain costs a lot, because the domestic market is too small". La Vanguardia. Archived from the original on 16 January 2014. Retrieved 9 May 2012.
  20. Chevalier, Michel (2012). Luxury Brand Management. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-118-17176-9.
  21. Reichert, Tom (2010). The Erotic History of Advertising. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-61592-336-6.
  22. Horwell, Veronica (5 February 2023). "Paco Rabanne obituary". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 6 February 2023.
  23. Krause, Grace Eliza Goodwin, Amanda. "Paco Rabanne, the world-famous designer known for his fragrances, has died at 88". Insider. Retrieved 6 February 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  24. "Paco Rabanne: Celebrated designer dies aged 88". BBC News. 3 February 2023. Retrieved 6 February 2023.
  25. Has the Countdown Begun?: Through Darkness to Enlightenment (Reprint ed.). London: Souvenir Press Ltd. 12 May 1994. ISBN 9780285631908.
  26. "French Designer Paco Rabanne Shows Drawings in Moscow". ARTINFO. 5 October 2005. Retrieved 20 May 2008.
  27. Olena Holub (2006). French couturiers travel to Ukraine in search of inspiration. day.kyiv.ua.
  28. "Fashion Shows: Fashion Week, Runway, Designer Collections". Vogue. Retrieved 18 August 2022.
  29. Lochanski, Tess (2 December 2015). "julien dossena führt paco rabanne zurück in die zukunft". i-D (in German). Retrieved 18 August 2022.
  30. Foreman, Katya (4 May 2012). "Paco Rabanne, Manish Arora Part Ways". Retrieved 4 February 2023.
  31. Magazine, Wallpaper* (25 February 2016). "Belgian firm OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen designs Paco Rabanne's new Paris boutique". Wallpaper*. Retrieved 18 August 2022.
  32. "Paco Rabanne for DSM Ladies' Bag". Dover Street Market. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
  33. "The Big Revamp". British Vogue. 17 January 2011. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
  34. "Paco Rabanne : l'hyperview de Thierry Ardisson | Archive INA". Retrieved 4 February 2023 – via YouTube.
  35. Le Libre Journal de Serge de Beketch, broadcast on Radio Courtoisie on 10 November 1993.
  36. "Les «prédictions» de Paco Rabanne fort mal perçues dans le Gers". ladepeche.fr. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
  37. "Paco Rabanne à propos du grand incendie à Paris | INA". Retrieved 4 February 2023 – via ina.fr.
  38. "Paco Rabanne: Celebrated designer dies aged 88". BBC News. 3 February 2023. Retrieved 3 February 2023.
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