Celebrating Paco Rabanne’s Otherworldly, Unwearable Fashion

On February 3, 2023, Puig, the parent company behind Paco Rabanne, announced that the namesake fashion designer had passed away at 88 years old. From jewelry designer (or self-proclaimed accessoriste) to fashion provocateur, Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo, better known as Paco Rabanne, forged an inimitable career through his revolutionary use of unconventional materials. Known for his signature mod frocks created from chainmail and linked plastic discs, the craftsman somehow evoked a feeling of modernity while simultaneously harking back to both medieval times and the retro days of Space Age '60s trends. Considered a co-founder of this pivotal moment in fashion history, Rabanne, Pierre Cardin, and André Courrèges are all credited with the Jetsons-esque silhouettes that defined the era.

The Spanish designer and his mother (who worked as a seamstress for Cristóbal Balenciaga) relocated to France as refugees from the Spanish Civil War when Rabanne was just a boy. As a student of architecture in Paris, the non-traditional designer began crafting jewelry and buttons on top of his studies. At the age of 30, Rabanne showed his earliest fashion designs and just two years later, his breakthrough presentation put him on the map. The 1966 collection, Twelve Unwearable Dresses in Contemporary Materials, was shown at the George V, fully encompassing an original and innovative point of view and garnering a reputation of French fashion’s l'enfant terrible. The designer played music, breaking tradition with the typical silent fashion shows at the time, and casted models of color to present his designs. Rabanne was also known for other eccentricities, like his belief in having experienced past lives in which he space-travelled to Earth eons ago, which no doubt informed his liberating view of design.

Forming intergalactic garments from unexpected textiles like thread-linked plastic and metal, Rabanne became a favorite of ‘60s style sirens from Audrey Hepburn and Françoise Hardy, to collector Peggy Guggenheim and Barbarella’s Jane Fonda, for whom he would design custom space-age costumes for Roger Vadim's 1968 comedic sci-fi film. As revealing as his silhouettes were, those donning the head-turning discs seemed to become armored intergalactic warriors, evoking a sentiment in support of Women’s Liberation, breaking tradition from both needle and thread, and societal norms.

Although the designer stepped back from fashion in 1999 and has since passed on, his legacy continues at his namesake Maison under the creative direction of Julien Dossena. For Spring/Summer 2021, the designer used the metallic discs and linking technique to create several chainmail-like looks that referenced back to the armor-like silhouettes that Rabanne experimented with—and these creations could be considered just as wearable today as Rabanne's '60s creations once were. But wearability was never the point for Rabanne, it was what the clothes represented—innovation, strength, and an eye for the future.