Paco Rabanne made a comet-like entrance into the fashion world in 1966 with sparkling no-sew dresses made of linked plastic and metal. Vogue swooned over the Basque designer. “He is constantly working on his idea of redoing the world,” the magazine wrote at the time. “[He] feels that there is not one single thing that cannot be reconsidered or redone in a more modern way.”
Though Rabanne was engaged with the possibilities of the Space Age, his use of chain mail and metal also seemed to reference medieval armor. Just as he liberated fashion from the needle and fabric (pliers were more his thing), so he designed strong looks for liberated women that were both protective and provocative.
Marrying old and new was a Rabanne signature; handwork wasn’t incompatible with cutting-edge materials and production for him. Now, with fashion pushing in artsy new directions amid pandemic-imposed lockdowns, Rabanne has emerged as a sort of patron saint of craft. For spring 2021 designers, including Kei Ninomiya, Demna Gvasalia, and Julien Dossena, who is currently the head of the house that Paco built, followed suit, creating looks in his image.
