The family found relative stability in Morlaix, a quiet rural part of Brittany, where Francisco was largely brought up by women. For the first five years of his life Francisco had to contend with bombings and machine gunfire as he was shuttled between camps.Īfter his father was captured and executed in 1939 he escaped with his mother across the Pyrenees. His maternal grandfather had been one of the first Spanish socialists killed by the Civil Guard his father led the Republican forces against Franco in the north. Paco Rabanne was born Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo in the Spanish part of the Basque country, near San Sebastian, on February 18 1934. The items in Dossena’s revamped collections ranged from slim jeans and bomber jackets to lighter versions of the founding father’s chainmail dresses. Only with the arrival of the Breton designer Julien Dossena, who became creative director at Paco Rabanne in 2013, did things begin to improve. The departure of Rabanne himself – who by this time was being openly derided as “Wacky Paco” in the French popular press – prompted some to wonder whether the fashion house had a future. By 1987 the Spanish cosmetics group Puig, already the owners of Parfums Paco Rabanne, had gained control of the apparel business as well, and by the new millennium turnover within the House of Rabanne had come to be largely dependent upon perfume sales. Though Rabanne was, he admitted, “rather put out once” to hear himself described in passing as “the perfumes man”, the financial figures bore out this description. In another indication of the designer’s forward-thinking tactics, Paco Rabanne was among the first brands to be sampled in a men’s magazine readers of Playboy in July 1984 received an insert imbued with the latest luxury scent. Calandre (1969, named after the French for a car’s radiator grille), Paco Rabanne pour Hommes (1974) and XS (1993-94) were some of the most successful scents of their day, while Lady Million (2010) – sold in diamond-shaped bottles with embossed gold caps – played up to ideas of extravagance. He also designed various costumes for plays, ballets and films, including the cod-Amazonian uniforms worn by the “Guard girls” in the 1967 Bond spoof Casino Royale.įor the intergalactic sex goddess Barbarella in Roger Vadim’s 1968 film of the same name, he produced pirate-style leather boots, halter tops made from see-through moulded plastic and a green dress that resembled a Space Age lampshade (and offered about as much coverage).īut as with most post-war fashion designers, he found real wealth only with the launch of his perfume and diffusion ranges. Later ventures included the first real sally into disposable fashion – with a line of paper dresses sold in sachets for 15 francs – and outfits constructed from dozens of linked buttons.
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