Spanish fashion designer Paco Rabanne died at the age of 88 in France

The Spanish designer Paco Rabanne, famous for his metal dresses, died Friday at the age of 88 in France, in Brittany, announced to AFP the Catalan group Puig, which owns the brand bearing his name.

 

With deep sadness, Puig announces the death of Paco Rabanne," said a statement, confirming a report in the regional daily Le Télégramme. The designer died in the village of Portsall where he lived, a spokesman told AFP.

 

A major figure in fashion, his vision was bold, revolutionary and provocative, conveyed through a unique aesthetic. He will remain an important source of inspiration for Puig's fashion and fragrance teams, who are constantly working together to express Mr. Paco Rabanne's radically modern codes," said Marc Puig, group CEO, quoted in the release.

  

Jose Manuel Albesa, president of the division "beauty and fashion" of Puig, paid tribute to the "radical and rebellious spirit" of the designer.

 

Who else could inspire fashion-conscious Parisian women to demand plastic and metal dresses? Who else but Paco Rabanne could imagine a perfume called +Calandre+ - the word means +car grill+ - and make it an icon of modern femininity?" he added.

 

Born on February 18, 1934 in the Spanish Basque Country, in San Sebastian where his mother was first hand at Cristobal Balenciaga, Paco Rabanne -- whose real name is Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo -- graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris, architecture section.

 

His father, General Rabaneda Postigo, who commanded the Guernica garrison, was shot by Franco's soldiers in 1936. In 1939, the family fled to France.

 

He began his career by creating accessories, jewelry, ties, buttons that he offered to Dior, Saint-Laurent, Cardin. Before launching himself in fashion to make it live in adequacy with the materials and the new techniques.

 

Throughout his career, the fashion designer, who was assiduous in his practice of esotericism, was also noted for a number of eccentric statements and hazardous predictions.

 

In 1999, for example, he announced in one of his books the destruction of Paris by the fall of the Mir station based on a very personal reading of the prophecies of Nostradamus.