French-Spanish designer Paco Rabanne has died at the age of 88 at his home in Portstall, in northwestern France, the fashion firm he founded confirmed.
Francisco Rabaneda y Cuervoborn on February 18, 1934 in the Spanish town of Pasajes, in the Basque Country, made a great career as a dressmaker and perfume creator, especially in France.
“He was one of the most important figures of the 20th century.”, pointed out the brand, which added that “his mark will remain as a constant source of inspiration”.
Paco Rabanne died in the house on the edge of the sea that he owned in the French Finistere, where he took refuge with his family in February 1939, since when he nurtured a great love for the region.
Among the memories he always kept of the region is that he took refuge in a Brest neighborhood from persecution by the Gestapo during World War II and where he lived for several years after the conflict.
The son of a Republican shot by the Franco regime, Rabanne trained with Balenciaga, another Basque couturier based in Paris.
“Not everyone can be a star. You have to be very smart (…) The essential thing is that they talk about you, differentiate yourself from others. never copy”, he assured.
Rabanne gained worldwide fame in the 1960s with metallic (especially aluminum) or plastic outfits, within a completely avant-garde conception of fashion that added to technological advances or the space age.
From that period, the metal plate dress made famous by the French singer Françoise Hardy in 1968, the exuberant costumes that the actress Jane Fonda wore in the science fiction film “Barbarella” (1967) or various collections “all plastic” of 1967 and 1968.
It was at the end of the 1960s that the collaboration between the designer and the fashion and beauty company Puig began, which finally acquired the firm in 1986.
“Paco Rabanne made transgression magnetic”, affirmed in a note José Manuel Albesa, president of the Beauty and Fashion division of Puig.
He also wondered “who else could induce elegant Parisian women to clamor for dresses made of plastic and metal? Who but Paco Rabanne could imagine a fragrance called Calandre (meaning ‘car grill’) and make it an icon of modern femininity?”.
“That radical and rebellious spirit distinguishes him: there is only one Rabanne”, he stressed.
At the end of the last century, shortly before giving up his work as a dressmaker, he created great controversy by predicting that the Russian Mir station would fall on Paris, following a personal interpretation of Nostradamus’s prophecies.
Eccentric to a fault, in recent years he has distanced himself from the media and focused on a simple life in Brittany.
Source: EFE
Source: Gestion
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