The ritually black coat and the string-cut beard collar hid a colorful man.
An illuminated, inexhaustible on his picaresque past lives.
Since his childhood insomnia, the cantor of reincarnation had had the opportunity to recognize himself, pell-mell, as a courtesan of King Louis XV, as Merlin the Enchanter in Brocéliande, as an assassin under the reign of Tutankhamun... He who asserted without flinching to have preceded the flood in Atlantis 75,000 years ago, predicted that his life as a designer would be the last.
No doubt the most tangible and prolific of his careers.
Nothing predestined this architect, trained in Fine Arts in the studio of Auguste Perret, the inventor of reinforced concrete, to create dresses, except the need to finance his studies.
His mother, who was head of the workshop at Balenciaga in Spain, opened the doors of the big houses to him, including Givenchy, Dior and Nina Ricci.
In the early 1960s, the young Francisco sold his drawings and accessories there - bags, jewellery, hats or barrettes.
Passionate about innovation more than fashion, the architect launched in 1965 a line of jewelry in Rhodoïd, a plastic material based on cellulose acetate, light and rigid, which comes in all colors.
The collection, signed Paco Rabanne, is all the rage.
The art of diversion
Madness or brilliant intuition?
The student from the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district, seduced by the revolution in materials, imbued with avant-garde movements such as pop art and kinetic art, decided to "
shake up the archaic world of fashion
".
The provocateur caused an uproar during his first show in 1966. A collection of twelve dresses in Rhodoïd, this unprecedented material, was displayed on black mannequins – unheard of on a catwalk at the time.
The height of the break, the models wiggle their hips to music, to the rhythm of
Marteau sans maître
by Pierre Boulez!
The chroniclers are strangled, Paco Rabanne is jubilant.
Read alsoFashion Week: Paco Rabanne resists
Man will never stop cultivating the art of diversion.
Substituting riveting for sewing, he created his famous dresses in aluminum plates resembling chain mail that bare audacious areas of the body.
He alternately introduces paper, rope, wood or vinyl into fashion.
He is the first to knit fur.
The first also to discipline materials as improbable as holographic glass, solar reflectors or NASA's honeycomb canvas.
Little does he care about the comfort of the garment.
“
Haute couture must be 'importable'.
It's a dream manifesto
,” he proclaims.
He, "the plastic artist of fashion", "the metallurgist" mocked by Chanel, dressed the stars of the yéyé era, the Bardots, Fonda, Birkin and Vartan.
Twenty-four years after his first fashion show, it is the consecration: Paco Rabanne receives the Dé d'Or, the most prestigious distinction of haute couture.
Rabanne, all in paradoxes, fascinates and disconcerts.
Fashion, he proclaims at the top of his game, “
is not really my center of interest
”.
Just a way to make a living.
His empire, sold to the Spanish group Puig in 1986, extends over the five continents with a chain of licenses and some solid nuggets in the field of perfumes (Calandre, XS, Paco…).
Failed prediction
In the early 1990s, the mystic poured out his spiritual quest and proved to be a successful author.
From
Trajectory
to
Fil d'Ariane
, his books, published by Michel Lafon, have sold several million copies.
But the clairvoyant with the whimsical omens suffered a few setbacks.
He covers himself with shame after his highly publicized prediction of the destruction of Paris during the eclipse of August 11, 1999.
He ventures into catering where he collects a series of saucepans.
Le Montana, for example, its bar in the Latin Quarter closed its doors after eighteen months.
Read alsoAnother look at Paco Rabanne
“
You have to give free rein to your intuitions
.
This was the credo of Paco Rabanne who apologized for being a fanatic.
His character, he confessed, had been forged in the tumults of his childhood torn between a militant Marxist mother, who instilled in him pragmatism, and a grandmother versed in esotericism, who rocked him with her secrets as a healer.
Uprooted from his native Spain by the civil war at the age of 5, the adopted Breton never knew his father, a Republican general shot by Franco's army.
A context that very early fed his fantasy, that of suspending time.
The man with 36 past lives now has eternity to reconcile with his past.
Paco Rabanne in 1994. He then celebrated his thirty years of creation.