Paco Rabanne and his metallic poetry
Instead of fabric, thread and needle, Paco Rabanne used metal, wire and pliers in constructions beyond time
Spain has always left us a significant artistic legacy. In literature, from Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) to Maria Dueñas (born 1964); in cinema, from Luis Buñuel (1900-1983) to Pedro Almodóvar (born in 1949); in architecture, from Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) to Santiago Calatrava (born 1951); in the visual arts from Diego Velásquez (1599-1660) and Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) to Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Salvador Dalí (1904-1989). In the area of fashion it was no different: Renaissance Spain, at the time of the circumnavigations, gave us the use of black; the curved dress and the ruff collar, great references of the fashion of that time, even before it was dictated by France.
In creations from a closer past, at the beginning of the 20th century, we had the talent of Mariano Fortuny (1871-1949) with his draping and the famous “Delphos Dress”; in the middle of this same century we were graced with the incomparable work of the greatest name in haute couture of all time, Cristóbal Balenciaga (1895-1972 ); and, in the revolutionary 1960s, the transgressive and innovative fashion of the “metallurgist” Paco Rabanne (1934-2023), so nicknamed by Coco Chanel (1883-1971).
Paco Rabanne was born Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo, on February 18, 1934, in San Sebastián, in the Basque region of Spain. His father, an officer in the republican army, was killed during the Spanish Civil War. His mother was chief seamstress for Cristóbal Balenciaga, in San Sebastián. With the death of the father, the family moved to France, in 1939, and settled in Morlaix, in Brittany.
Francisco Rabaneda studied architecture at the Superior School of Fine Arts in Paris, between 1952 and 1963, where he developed a significant interest (and talent, obviously) in the search for new materials and, consequently, also in the search for new volumes and three-dimensional spaces. He won a prize at the Paris Biennale in 1963 for the creation of an “inhabitable sculpture”.
For financial support during his school years, he made models and drawings, which helped him to enter the world of fashion; especially creating shoes for Charles Jourdan, for whom he provided thirty drawings a month, for six years; in addition to having designed handbags for eight years for Roger Model. In 1959, Women's Wear Daily published a series of his silhouette designs for haute couture, now signed Franck Rabanne, which is considered his first public manifestation using a stage name. The name Paco Rabanne finally came to be used in 1965, with his first collection.
With family help, since his mother had worked in fashion, he began to develop embroidery and buttons, the latter with unusual materials, especially Rhodoïd (a type of plastic that is very similar to celluloid). Inserted in the world of fashion, he began to supply the sewing houses of Nina Ricci (1883-1970), Cristóbal Balenciaga, Hubert de Givenchy (1927-2018), Pierre Cardin (1922-2020), André Courrèges (1923- 2016), Maggy Rouff (1896-1971), among others.
In this process of incursion into fashion, he left the supplier universe to present his own creations. In 1965, he composed his first fashion collection with 12 dresses using “contemporary materials”, presented on February 1, 1966, in a room at the emblematic Hôtel George V, in Paris. It replaced the traditional presentations of haute couture shows with a true performance of models dancing with bare feet and clothes made of aluminum and Rhodoïd, approaching a creation of the arts much more than of wearable pieces. Behold, even though it caused great impact and questions, the recognition of its innovative talent had just arrived.
Established among the big names in fashion at the time, Paco Rabanne continued his search for new materials to be used in his creations, remaining faithful throughout his journey to those considered unusable for clothing. Genuineness and originality were his outstanding and unmistakable characteristics; in addition to the silver metallic shine, which gives us the idea of times to come and elucidations of a new era.
Rhodoïd tablets in vibrant and phosphorescent colours; plates of metal held together by rings (also of metal); pieces of leather coated and then knitted together; plastic; nylon blended paper; vinyl materials; plasticized lace; ostrich feathers, among other possibilities. He even made a dress, in partnership with the jeweller Arnaud Clerc, with 1000 gold plates, including inlays of 300 carats of diamonds at the neck, which was worn by the singer Françoise Hardy (born in 1944) in International Diamond Exhibition, in Paris, in 1968. It was said at the time that to go out on the streets in such an outfit you needed at least three bodyguards. For the cinema, in addition to dressing other actresses, he also designed costumes for Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) and Jane Fonda (born in 1937), this being a huge success in the film Barbarella (1967, directed by Roger Vadim [ 1928-2000 ] ])
" GENUINITY AND ORIGINITY WERE SIGNIFICANT AND UNMISTAKABLE FEATURES ; IN ADDITION TO THE SILVER METALLIC SHINE, WHICH GIVES US THE IDEA OF TIMES TO COME AND ELUCIDATIONS OF A NEW ERA."
In 1969, he embarked on prêt-à-porter and also launched handbags and shoes with the same innovative characteristics; all this, in addition to the clothes, in accordance with the air of the times associated with the space conquest. It felt like the future had really arrived. It was the Zeitgeist of the moment.
Also in 1969, he launched the perfume Calandre, becoming one of the most used fragrances in the 1970s. The flask, with simple and geometric shapes, which is an association between glass and plastic, was inspired by the United Nations Headquarters building, in New York, which reinforces the purist urban and architectural concept with the use of metal and of the glass. It was a feminine floral with hints of “metallic” chords, which evoked “the wind, speed, freedom and independence”. He also developed Métal, in 1979 and Ultraviolet, in 1999, among others. In 1983, he launched men's prêt-à-porter and, in 1986, his sewing house came under the control of the Puig family, with whom he had already created the perfumes.
After these brief biographical references, it is worth a little reflection on his creative process, a true creation laboratory. Paco Rabanne, with great propriety, had the ability to unite past-present-future. Its aesthetic sense of the future, with references to the past, was favoured and applied by the technologies of that time. When, in the 1960s, he launched his collections associated with times to come, he did not fail to live intensely in the present and also to be linked to the past, as his clothes with plates and metal rings were true visual and technical associations with armor and chain mail. medieval, however, with the update to the moment of the Space Age and the perspective of the future. A very insightful association uniting different eras and different readings. The future of A Space Odyssey did not arrive the way Rabanne envisioned; but with regard to his creative continuity, it can be said that he was also a herald in other times with new idealizations of clothes with hitherto unusual materials. In 1992, he created women's clothing using plastic fragments from pet bottles, which can be reflected in also announcing a new era linked to upcycling , so important and in vogue today, already in the 21st century. a generation of new fashion professionals who started using unusual materials to create clothes.
With all his contribution to the world of fashion associated with the idea of the future, Paco Rabanne was also somewhat esoteric. In July 1999, he announced his retirement from fashion. Rabanne sold his brand, leaving only the perfumery sector, believing in an apocalypse at the end of the decade, the end of the century and the end of the millennium, simultaneously. He published some books, including one, in 1999, entitled Le feu du ciel (“The fire from heaven”), mixing optimism and pessimism in an alarming text in accordance with his worldview.
If the French newspaper Le figaro reported his creations, in the 1960s, with the phrase “He wants to plasticize the world”; if Chanel said that “He is not a tailor, but a metalworker”; Salvador Dalí was much more pragmatic when he said: “He is the second genius of Spain, after me.”
