Paco Rabanne (Paco Raban). Paco Rabanne - the most famous couturier-locksmith
Paco Rabanne, the famous couturier-locksmith, as always excited the fashion world with a new collection spring-summer 2012
Paco Rabanne is an unprecedented phenomenon in the fashion world..
Experimenter and revolutionary, he stepped over the threshold of time for many years ahead. The new forms and materials invented by him had a huge impact on the entire world fashion and still amaze with their originality and extravagance. An outstanding philosopher and mystic whose life credo, which is the motto: "To shock, not to seduce" with his worldview and aesthetics, has a huge impact on young designers, especially Russian ones. The maestro himself defines his work as recreating memories of beautiful women from other civilizations. It should be said separately that the bags made by Paco Rabanne are a combination of beauty and coldness, luxury and originality.
Instead of threads and scissors - pliers and a soldering iron
Pliers and a soldering iron are devices that have little to do with high fashion, but not for Paco Rabanne. According to him, the form of clothing and structure cannot remain unchanged when global changes take place around. For more than 50 years, the designer has been using metal and plastic instead of fabrics, instead of scissors and threads, pliers and a soldering iron. He invented knitted fur and aluminum knitwear. For his extravagant collections, he is called "couturier-locksmith" or "metallurgist".
Over the years, his dresses were worn by Brigitte Bordeaux and Patricia Kaas, Jane Fonda and Ursula Anders, Sylvia Vartan and Françoise Hardy, and now the outrageous Lady Gaga and other celebrities wear the maestro's creations with pleasure.
Biography and career of Paco Rabanne
Paco Rabanne was born in 1934 in Spain in the city of San Sebastian. His father was a general of the Republican army, and his mother ran an atelier for the famous Spanish fashion designer Cristobal Belenciaga. After Franco came to power, the family emigrated to the USSR, and after the death of his father to France. While still a student at the National School of Fine Arts, Rabanne began to earn money by designing accessories for the collections of French fashion designers.
At the end of his studies, he received a diploma in architecture and forever decided to connect his life with fashion. Although the influence of architectural education has always been traced in its unusual design solutions. Until the early 60s, he worked in the famous fashion houses of Balenciaga, Christian Dior, Hubert de Gévanchy.
The designer presented his first collection under the enchanting title "12 experimental and unwearable models from modern materials" in February 1966. The collection included colored fur coats decorated with metal plates and rings. The demonstration of the collection caused a huge scandal, but the following shows of models made in the form of metal and chain mail, in which metal and fabric were connected by thin airy lace, shocked the public even more and eventually forced them to recognize the new couturier.
Graceful and feminine models made of aluminum and plastic combined with leather and ostrich feathers quickly became popular on stage and cinema.
The talent of the fashion designer was especially brightly revealed in the early 90s. Wide neckline and oval necklines; printed tunics adorned with precious stones; armor-shaped mini skirts made of metal lace and multi-colored chains, intertwined with paper ribbons with a holographic pattern, generously decorated with pearls; leather cut into squares and fastened with metal rings; aerial hats were all unique pieces of the maestro's flamboyant style throughout the '90s.
In the early 80s, Paco Rabanne opened a line of ready-to-wear, which caused no less enthusiasm than his haute couture models. Its boutiques and representative offices operate on five continents. In addition to opening a network of boutiques, Paco Rabanne published his own magazine, founded cultural centers, and his books “The End of Time” and “Professional Career” have been translated into many languages and are still popular. And although in 1999 the maestro announced his retirement and left the Chamber of Haute Couture, he still pleases his admirers with his extravagant and stylish ready-to-wear collections.
Paco Rabanne: spring-summer 2012 collection
Paco Rabanne, the famous couturier-locksmith, presented an exquisite and feminine collection for the spring-summer 2012 season. Models made in steel, blue and red tones pleased, as always, with a fantastic and unusual design. Models look beautiful and elegant, where metal plates are fastened in such a way that they imitate the skin of a crocodile. Dresses with enchanting voluminous collars resembled flowers of the distant future. The new collection in the spirit of the master is creative and extraordinary, but still things have found their owners. Several dresses were acquired by Lady Gaga and used as stage costumes.
in exile
This amazing man was born in a troubled time for Spain in a military family. The father of little Paco, who was born in the Basque Country, once took part in the Rif campaign in northern Africa, side by side with the future dictator Franco. During the Civil War, he sided with the Republicans, for which he was arrested and for a long time was considered missing. Only years later, while already outside the country, relatives learned that he had been shot back in 1937, when his son, a future fashion designer, was only 3 years old.
After her husband's arrest, Raban's mother, a young 29-year-old woman, takes a desperate step and flees with her four children to France. There, considerable hardships and trials await them: the family will be robbed by French soldiers, she will lose all her property, she will starve ... Paco, however, is still too small to remember anything, and learns about all this much later, from the stories of his mother. He fondly recalls his childhood in the town of Morlaix in the north of Brittany, saying that he was surrounded by amazing women.
"My mother was very wise, she gave me the freedom to do whatever I want, except for one thing - to deprive women of beauty."
The upbringing of the future designer was then done by his grandmother, a peasant woman, a superstitious and religious woman, and her mother, an ardent communist, revolutionary and atheist. It was she, apparently, who inspired her son with love and respect for the Woman. “My mother was very wise,” says Raban: “she gave me the freedom to do whatever I want, except for one thing - to deprive women of beauty.” And what Raban's mother knew a lot about was beauty and style, because in France she was lucky enough to enter the service of Cristobal Balenciaga and soon become his right hand. It was she who taught Raban to see and understand how a woman's dress is cut and sewn, which will be very useful to him in the future.
From buttons to scales
Fashion, however, at first did not interest Raban at all, and at the age of 17 he entered the Paris School of Fine Arts to study as an architect. By his own admission, architecture will teach him to see perspective, space and work with different materials. But studying costs money, and in order to somehow earn extra money, the young man draws for magazines, makes jewelry and ... buttons. It was in this, at first glance, trifling occupation that his design talent first manifested itself - his buttons made of leather and plastic with coffee beans glued to them and silver-plated pasta are so good and original that such fashion houses as Givenchy, Nina Ricci soon become interested in them. and Pierre Cardin.
Earrings made from an unusual and cheap material - rhodoid (high-quality transparent plastic) - are also very popular due to their extravagant design and price. They are sold like hot cakes: in the first year, a novice designer sells about 25,000 of his products. Inspired by the success, Raban started to create clothes from the same material, which eventually became his trademark, rhodoid.
In 1966, in the glamorous George V hotel in Paris, the first collection of clothes from Raban was shown: barefoot dark-skinned models, covered with small scales of aluminum and plastic plates, defile to loud music - a spectacle hitherto unseen, cosmic and bewitching. The clothes are unwearable, the presentation is defiant, the conservative public is in amazement. The legendary Coco Chanel after this show will call Raban a “metallurgist” and, even worse, a “tinsmith”: “This is not a fashion designer, this is a tinsmith! I get cold when I see these women in aluminum plates. Who would have thought to solder the poor things like that?
Opinions, however, as usual, differ, and many perceive the new fashion with enthusiasm. Raban is applauded by his compatriot and friend Salvador Dali, who immediately, with his usual indulgence, awards Raban the title of "the second genius of Spain."
The effect is achieved, Raban makes people talk about himself, and from Francisco Rabaneda y Cuervo, who for some time signed his sketches as Frank Raban, he turns into designer Paco Raban. A new brand is born.
golden decade
The new path gives a huge scope for the imagination of such an inventor as Raban, and he indulges in all serious. Following the collection of "unwearable" dresses, there are cloaks made of ostrich feathers and transparent tape, paper dresses, tunics made of plastic and iron rings, fluorescent leather products, crazy accessories made of black fur, velvet and beloved rhodoid. Raban endlessly experiments with materials, their processing and the design of the final product. He is the first to present to the public products made of knitted fur, where pieces of fur are collected on a woolen thread.
"I wanted to create an image of a free, wayward woman who is by no means someone else's thing, she manages her own money and knows the price of independence."
The 60s become the decade of Paco Raban. He is in fashion and on everyone's lips, his dresses are acquired for his collection by the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), he creates costumes for films, where he dresses stars such as Audrey Hepburn (Two for the Road, 1967) and Jane Fonda (Barbarella, 1968). The era of cute shy women with wasp waists in puffy skirts is a thing of the past, Raban comes up with clothes for a new type of woman - independent, sexy, a little aggressive. “I wanted to create a certain image,” he will say later, “the image of a free, wayward woman who is by no means someone else’s thing, she manages her own money and knows the price of independence.”
In 1969, Paco Raban's first perfume "Calandre" appears, followed by a whole series of fragrances: "Metal", "La Nuit", "XS", "Paco", "Ultraviolet", "1 Million". A new, very important, perfumery era is coming in the life of the brand. In the 70s, Paco Rabann gradually moved away from haute couture and focused on prêt-à-porter: in 1973 he launched his line of ready-to-wear for men, and in 1990 for women.
In the late 90s, Paco Raban creates his last collection, sells the brand to the Catalan fashion and perfume giant Puig, and has since lived, in his own words, on one salary. Part of this salary, by the way, Monsieur Rabann generously donates to the Cistercian monks who care for AIDS patients in France.
Age of Aquarius
At present, despite his advanced age, Paco Raban is still young at heart and has not lost his propensity to outrageous. For example, he is very willing to share with the press his impressions of his astral journeys, the first of which happened to him at the age of seven; about seeing God for the first time during a football match, or about who he was in his previous lives (a buried alive Basque priest and favorite of the French King Louis XV, among others). He is sure that the current reincarnation completes the cycle of his earthly incarnations, and therefore intends to live to the fullest.
In the fashion world, he is now a rare guest, and when he appears, he does not miss the opportunity to misbehave: in 2011, for example, he created a series of "architectural" costumes for Lady Gaga's performance at the MTV ceremony.
It's funny, but in everyday life the fashion designer himself dresses very modestly, almost ascetically - in all black, and if it were not for the sly devilry in his laughing eyes, he could well be mistaken for a priest. The “padre” looks to the future with exceptional optimism and predicts the onset of a new era of Aquarius, during which a person will become cleaner, more spiritual and happier. Well, let's hope he's right.
Paco Rabanne (Paco Rabanne)- French Couturier, fashion designer, designer from Spain.
Short biography of Paco Rabanne
Paco Rabanne (real name Francisco Rabaneda y Cuervo) was born in Basque Country (Spain) in 1934, but in 1939, after the death of his father, his family moved to France. He was raised by his mother, who was a member of the Spanish Socialist Party, and by his grandmother, who was fond of religion. Since childhood, Paco Rabanne has been somewhat attached to the world of fashion, as his mother worked for the famous Spanish fashion designer Cristobal Balenciaga. In 1950, Paco visited Moscow with his mother.
At 18, Rabanne entered the National School of Fine Arts. To pay for his studies, Paco worked part-time at the Balenciaga Fashion House, making accessories and jewelry. He used new materials, such as rhodoid, a high-quality cellulose acetate-based plastic, which offered a lot of imagination and were somewhat unusual and non-standard. Light, colorful and inexpensive, his products attracted the attention of young buyers. Gradually, Paco began to create other accessories: handbags, belts, and collaborate with Givenchy, Dior, Yves Saint Laurent and other famous designers. By 1965, he had sold over 20,000 pieces of jewelry and accessories.
In the early 1960s, changes began to take place in the fashion world. Architects, turning away from stone, turned to metal, and painters - to bright neon. So Paco Rabanne in 1966 presented his first collection, which consisted of 12 dresses that were made of plastic and metal. In their manufacture, pliers and a blowtorch were used. Demonstrated a collection of models barefoot. The first collection was so unusual that it shocked the public, but brought Rabanne recognition among fashion designers in Paris and fame.
After the first collection, Paco continued to impress the public and released clothes made of paper, leather, metal, feathers. For dresses in 1988, the designer used laser discs, which conveyed an unusual reflective effect. In all his outfits, femininity is combined with ultra-modern eclecticism, space motifs echo the business office style.
Paco Rabanne perfumes
In 1969, Paco decided to launch his own perfume - "Calandre", which received recognition. Calender (Calandre) - a machine for the continuous formation of a sheet of polymer or paper. The metal-rimmed flacon was associated with New York and contained the scent of cypress inside. Paco also created fragrances such as PacoRabanne PourHomme (1973), Metal (1979), LaNuit (1985), Sport (1986), Tenere (1988), XS (Excess Pour Homme) (1993). XS is one of the most popular men's fragrances.
Paco Rabanne watch
Of course, only a design is created for watches, and they are usually made by a well-known watch company. It was the same with Rabanno. In cooperation with MONTRES AMBRE SA, Paco Rabanne watches were produced, which are characterized by care for the environment, which is why they are made from recycled materials. Paco does not have women's and men's collections, there are different sizes of watches. That is, all watches are unisex, they can be worn by both women and men. Simple forms, embossed cases, that's what captivates buyers Rabanne.
Movie costumes
Unusual outfits Rabanne penetrated the cinema. Still, because they were so unusual that they paid increased attention to themselves. Hollywood celebrities Francoise Hardy, Jane Fonda, Audrey Hepburn starred in Rabanne costumes. Over the years, Ursula Dealere, Sylvie Vartan, Patricia Kaas, Brigitte Bardot wore these unusual dresses made of feathers, metal and paper.
The unique Paco Rabanne
Paco Rabanne received many awards, among them: the prize 'Beauty Products Industry' - for 'Calandre' (1969), the Oscar "Foundation of fragrances" (Fragrance Foundation Recognition Award) - for the composition and packaging of 'Paco Rabanne Pour Homme' (1974 ), "Golden Needle" - for the Haute Couture collection (1997), an award for contribution to fashion at the First International Fashion Festival (1985), "Golden Thimble" (1990), Paco Rabanne also became a Knight of the Legion of Honor in France.
Rabanne's ready-to-wear lines (the first appeared in the early 80s) were shown at numerous international exhibitions and caused no less delight than his haute couture models. On five continents, boutiques and representative offices worked for the Raco Rabanne brand.
For many years, Rabanne's works have been exhibited in the best museums and festivals in the world. In 1989, in recognition of his talent and for his active contribution to numerous humanitarian projects, Paco Rabanne was awarded the highest order of Spain, the Order of Isabella the Catholic.
In 1991, Rabanne published his book, Trajectory, which became a bestseller and sold half a million copies. Soon Rabanne wrote the book "The End of Times" and after it, "The Present Time: The Road of the Initiates." In 1999, the book "Heavenly Fire" was published.
However, in 1999 this amazing artist announced his retirement from the world of haute couture and left Paris altogether.
One of the reasons why Rabanne had to leave Paris was an error in prediction. He predicted a catastrophe in Paris on the day of the August solar eclipse in 1999. When this did not come true, the fashion designer was severely attacked in the press.
Paco Raban has been painting for many years, but he has never exhibited his artwork in public. For the first time the artist presented his works at an exhibition at the Central House of Artists in Moscow. The official opening of the exhibition took place on October 1, 2005 and lasted until 14. In May 2008, the master again visited the Russian capital, this time he came for a three-day visit to take part in the opening of Veronica Jeanvie's Fashion House.
Where can I buy
Unfortunately, the addresses of stores are not indicated on the official website, and there are no addresses from the countries that are on the Ukrainian website. Therefore, the nearest official Paco Rabanne store can be found in Russia or Poland. However, there are many online stores that sell Paco Rabanne perfumes. Just be careful not to buy a fake!
The fashion designer is known all over the world. In fact, the name of the great fashion designer is Francisco Rabanerro Querro.
Paco Raban: biography
An eccentric mystic, revolutionary and even a little futurist - Paco Rabanne stepped forward several decades and brought the future into fashion. The fashion designer has always been somewhere outside of fashion. While everyone was striving for graceful forms and playing with airy fabrics, he experimented and shocked.
Fashion connoisseurs had no idea to what extent they want to see out of the ordinary outfits in their wardrobe until they came across the shocking collections of Paco Rabanne.
His clothes were not supposed to correspond to the high taste of French fashionistas, but nevertheless they quickly diverged into their wardrobes.
Paco Raban: career
No chiffon, silk or jersey: Paco Rabanne preferred vinyl, metal and discs. It was he who invented knitted fur and began to create fantasy outfits of the future - an unprecedented phenomenon in the global fashion industry.
It seemed that someday the fantasy should end, but it did not dry out, and each time the fashion designer gave out collections that were sold at an incredible speed.
His generally recognized talent and imagination were awarded the Golden Thimble, Golden Needle, Fashion Honors. He also received the Spanish Order of Isabella and the French Legion of Honor.
The roots of the originality and inconsistency of his character probably lie in the family. The fashion designer was born in Spain in 1934. Grandmother was a deeply religious person who kept occult secrets, mother, on the contrary, was an atheist and a member of the socialist party, and father was a real general. Francisco's mother kept her own atelier, so the love of sewing was inherited. Later, the family emigrated to the USSR, and a few years later moved to France. The talented Francisco, with his subtle artistic taste, entered the School of Fine Arts in Paris without any problems. He studied as an architect, but all his school years he designed and sewed bags, shoes, created various accessories, thereby earning a living.
After graduation, he received a diploma, but did not become an architect and connected his life with fashion. Although the influence of education can be traced in the unusual constructive forms of Paco Rabanne's collections.
Unusual ideas and the undoubted talent of the student drew the attention of the great masters. After leaving school, he studied with Balenciaga, Givenchy and Dior.
Having gained experience, he began independent work in the 60s. At that time, architecture was filled with a new fashion trend - the use of plastic and metal. Of course, Francisco always followed the trends in architecture and was inspired by these ideas.
Paco Raban: new ideas
Inspired by new research, Paco Rabanne launches his first collection in 1966. The Parisian public was shocked. The revolutionary, if not scandalous, outfits that his models showed made a lot of noise. Although, a little later, fashion connoisseurs realized that this is exactly what they lacked in those turbulent years.
Rough metal, combined with the finest lace, chain mail, aluminum and leather, feathers - all this began to appear on the bodies of famous people famous for their good taste.
Continuing his search, Paco Rabanne went on a grand experiment and created a collection of disposable paper dresses.
Soon, his bizarre outfits began to appear on the heroes of Hollywood films.
Even the great Coco Chanel recognized his talent and called him a couturier locksmith, for his love for unusually strong materials.
Paco Rabanne himself has always considered himself a fashion designer of the future. The unique style of his models included metallic lace, chains, bright colors, ribbons, paper, gems, cut leather, bound with metal rings and much more.
The outrageous fashion designer always wanted to shock the public, not seduce. And achieved this.
In the late 60s, Paco Rabanne released the Calandre perfume, intended for dynamic and energetic ladies. Of course, the design of the bottle was unusual: it had an automotive theme. A little later, a line of perfumes for men appeared. Daring, passionate and completely unique fragrance quickly found fans.
Paco Raban: businessman
In addition to his brilliant talent, Paco Rabanne had the skills of a businessman and advertiser. His boutiques worked all over the world and won the hearts of fashionistas from all over the world.
The fashion designer opened cultural centers, wrote books and published a magazine.
Despite the grandeur of his career, in 1999 he left the fashion industry and left Paris. Perhaps the reason for this was his incorrect prediction: Paco Rabanne predicted a disaster that would happen in the capital on the day of the solar eclipse of August 1999. When the prophecy did not come true, journalists attacked the fashion designer and his name often appeared on the front pages of newspapers, but this time not with admiring comments.
