Over the a long time, the Spanish-born Mr. Rabanne constructed a world model broadly identified in retail settings for perfumes, males’s fragrances and off-the-rack outfits and, within the couture world, for runway collections that experimented with colours and supplies akin to plastics, paper and even coconuts.
He was additionally a baffling eccentric, recounting what he described as particulars from previous lives stretching again to historic Egypt and, within the Nineties, giving doomsday predictions that Russia’s Mir area station would plummet to Earth and wipe out Paris in 1999. It left him the topic of biting headlines akin to “Beaming up to Planet Paco.”
In distinction to his daring designs, he was identified for his ascetic life-style of few possessions and intervals of reclusion in France, the place he was taken a boy together with his mom within the late Nineteen Thirties after his father was killed within the Spanish Civil War for opposing the right-wing forces of Gen. Francisco Franco.
“I’ve only got one influence, and that’s my invention of new fabrics,” he informed the Independent in 2003. “That will be the only influence I have. You know I’m not too concerned with my legacy as I am with creating for the future. Never look back on the past.”
His affect in increasing the fashion vocabulary within the Nineteen Sixties was aided by admirers akin to Audrey Hepburn, Ursula Andress, Brigitte Bardot and Françoise Hardy, who all wore his designs. Fashion empress Coco Chanel referred to as him “the metallurgist of fashion” for his groundbreaking minidresses of aluminum and different supplies and clunky jewellery made of rhodoid, a sort of plastic.
Fashion author and historian Suzy Menkes referred to as Mr. Rabanne’s Nineteen Sixties designs “so much more than a New Look.”
“It was rather a revolutionary attitude for women who wanted both to protect and assert themselves,” she wrote in a submit on Instagram following Mr. Rabanne’s dying.
His shimmery, body-hugging costume for Fonda in “Barbarella” grew to become one of the sultry showpieces of the campy futurist drama.
‘That’s it!’” Fonda recounted in 2015 after seeing Mr. Rabanne’s design for the movie, which was directed by her husband, Roger Vadim. “I’m best when I’m wearing something structured, with no frills or bows. Something that will show my waist and bum, because I’ve always had a good bum.”
Mr. Rabanne usually performed the function of fashion provocateur as a lot as fashion innovator.
He as soon as had his runway fashions put on astronaut helmets in a fashion present. He was among the many first to make use of Black runway fashions and generally mocked the business’s pretensions with playful honesty. In his first main present in 1966 in Paris, he referred to as the gathering of metal attire “Twelve Unwearable Dresses in Contemporary Materials.” Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí praised the present because the work of one other Spanish visionary.
“So it was a moment when women emerged to be warriors because they needed to affirm their desire of emancipation, freedom and liberty,” Mr. Rabanne stated. “The armor was almost necessary.”
He added: “Who cares if no one can wear my dresses. They are statements.”
Yet he additionally was at all times seeking to broaden his title. Mr. Rabanne grew to become identified within the Seventies for colognes, purses and ready-to-wear fashion that made him acquainted to department-store shoppers world wide.
He later cast a partnership with the Spanish fashion home Puig, which owns a variety of different manufacturers together with Nina Ricci, Jean Paul Gaultier, Carolina Herrera and Dries Van Noten.
Francisco Rabaneda y Cuervo was born in Pasajes in northern Spain’s Basque area, on Feb. 18, 1934. His mom was a chief seamstress at designer Cristóbal Balenciaga’s couture home in San Sebastián. His father, an officer within the anti-Franco Republican forces, was executed by Franco loyalists after he refused to change sides within the civil warfare.
The household fled to France in 1939, and Mr. Rabanne studied structure at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He discovered a sideline promoting drawings of fashion concepts: shoe designs for Charles Jourdan, equipment for Christian Dior and Yves Saint-Laurent.
In a 1997 memoir, “Journey: From One Life to Another,” Mr. Rabanne stated the flight from Spain and watching World War II unfold from France “made him an adult” lengthy earlier than he was a youngster.
In 1959, Women’s Wear Daily printed seven sketches of attire signed “Franck Rabanne” — a reputation he used till adopting Paco Rabanne in 1965. At his first atelier, he used repurposed bicycle seats for chairs and developed the thought of utilizing recycled metals and different supplies, akin to paper and wooden chips, for attire, on inspiration from the “found-art” creations of Marcel Duchamp.
“I am always searching for new materials, not for their shapes but for the way light plays on them and their textures. If I am a designer, it is to find new textures,” Mr. Rabanne stated.
In addition to “Barbarella,” Mr. Rabanne’s designs have been featured in movies together with director Jean-Luc Godard’s “2 or 3 Things I Know About Her” and the spy spoof “Casino Royale,” each made in 1967.
At the identical time, Mr. Rabanne’s peculiarities grew to become legendary. At numerous occasions, he claimed that in previous lives he knew Jesus and murdered historic Egypt’s King Tutankhamen, higher often known as King Tut. He urged folks to go away Paris earlier than August 1999, when he stated the Russian Mir area station would crash into the town and kill hundreds.
He was fond of fashion koans. “Fashion announces the future,” he stated, describing his principle of hairstyles as crystal balls. “When hair balloons, regimes fall. When hair is smooth, all is well.”
In 2005, he opened an exhibit of his drawings that he stated have been influenced by the 2004 assault in Beslan in Russia’s North Ossetia area, the place Islamist militants killed greater than 300 folks, together with many youngsters. Mr. Rabanne requested that the proceeds from the present go to households affected by the bloodshed. For the 2011 MTV Europe Music Awards, he designed a paper gown worn by Lady Gaga.
Mr. Rabanne’s affect remained a recurring theme amongst designers. In 2003, Prada coated bathing fits with molded plastic applique and Dolce & Gabbana unveiled silver astronaut-style fits — each an homage to Mr. Rabanne’s Nineteen Sixties work.
Information on survivors was not instantly obtainable.
Mr. Rabanne offered himself as an outsider whose designs tried to shake up the fashion world. He might, nevertheless, flash a way of humor in regards to the line between fashion as artwork and fashion as one thing sensible to placed on.
He informed an interviewer that he as soon as designed a mermaid costume made of mother-of-pearl disks within the Nineteen Sixties for a consumer who owned an artwork gallery.
“’She wore it one night to a Mozart concert,” he recounted. “She walked in late and stopped the concert because she sounded like a wind chime.”