Famous designer Paco Rabanne died at the age of 88
Famed perfume and fashion designer Paco Rabanne has died at the age of 88 at his home in France.
Her death was confirmed by Puig, the brand’s parent company, which said she had “marked a generation with a radical vision of fashion and her legacy will live on”.
Rabanne gained global fame for his eccentric fashion designs.
Puig’s fashion president, José Manuel Albesa, praised Rabanne’s work, which he said “made a magnetic offense”.
“Who else can induce fashionable Parisian women to ask for dresses made of plastic and metal,” said Mr. Albesa. “That radical and rebellious spirit distinguishes him: there is only one Rabanne.”
Marc Puig, the chairman and executive director of Puig, called Rabanne “the main personality in fashion” and paid tribute to “courage, a revolutionary and provocative vision, delivered through a unique aesthetic”.
Rabanne was born into a military family in the Basque region of Spain, near the city of San Sebastian. His father was a colonel in the Republican military, who was executed by General Francisco Franco’s nationalist forces in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War.
His mother – who had worked as a seamstress for designer Cristobal Balenciaga – moved the family to Paris in 1939 after Nationalist forces captured Madrid and won the war.
After growing up in the French capital, Rabanne became an architecture student at l’École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, where he earned money drawing fashion sketches.
After a short time working in the construction industry with a concrete manufacturer, he opened a fashion career designing jewelry for Givenchy, Dior and Balenciaga.
Then in 1966, he launched his own eponymous fashion house – Paco Rabanne – which saw him garner international accolades.
His designs drew praise and controversy, and his debut collection, titled 12 Unwearable Dresses in Contemporary Materials, outraged the French fashion press after models were adorned with clear metal and other unlikely materials.
“I’ve always had the impression of a time accelerator,” he said of his design in 2016. “You can approach enough time and not indulge in familiar pleasures, which I think are rotten. .”
In 1968, he signed an agreement with the Catalonia-based Puig family, a heavyweight in the fashion and fragrance industry. The deal marked his entry into the perfume industry, which would eventually become synonymous with his name.
The debut fragrance, Calandre, is still available today, while Lady Million – known for its colorful gold bottles – maintains its grip over the market.
The innovation permeates every aspect of their business. He was one of the first fragrance designers to launch one of his products online in the mid-1990s.
But he is also known for being provocative. At various stages, he claimed to have had many lives, to be about 78,000 years old, to have seen God and to have been visited by aliens.
And in 1999, he caused controversy after predicting in his book – Fire From Heaven – that Paris would be destroyed that year when the Russian space station Mir crashed into Earth. He said he had predicted the disaster from reading the 16th-century French astrologer Nostradamus.
In 1999, after decades as one of the industry’s foremost innovators, Rabanne retired from fashion. For the next 24 years, he rarely appeared in the public eye.
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 source of inspiration,” he added.
Source: BBC
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