London, Europe Brief News – The Spanish fashion designer Paco Rabanne, best known for his space-age metal dresses, bestselling fragrances and eccentric pronouncements, has died at the age of 88.
His Paco Rabanne brand has first announced his death in a statement issued on Friday.
“I am profoundly saddened by the death of Paco Rabanne,” the group’s chief executive, Marc Puig, further said in a statement.
“Through his great personality, he transmitted a unique aesthetic and a daring, revolutionary and provocative vision of the world of fashion,” he also said.
The house of Paco Rabanne paid its own tribute to the man it described as a “visionary designer and founder”.
It said: “Among the most seminal fashion figures of the 20th century, his legacy will remain a constant source of inspiration. We are grateful to Monsieur Rabanne for establishing our avant-garde heritage and defining a future of limitless possibilities.”
Rabann was, born Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo in the Basque Country in February 1934. His father was a Republican soldier who was killed by Franco. His mother was a “petit main”, or couture seamstress, for Cristóbal Balenciaga.
Despite becoming one of the most famous fashion names of the 1960s, Rabanne came to fashion quite late. After studying to be an architect at L’école Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the 1950s, he went on to work in architecture for almost 10 years.
During that time he dabbled in sketching, but it was not until the 1960s that he began making clothes and accessories.
