In 1966, the Spanish couturier Paco Rabanne presented his breakout collection, 'Twelve Unwearable Dresses in Contemporary Materials'. An evolution of an earlier project, as well as his work creating plastic accessories for Parisian houses like Schiaparelli, Balenciaga and Givenchy in the early 1960s, the collection of abbreviated mini dresses were fashioned from futuristic panels of aluminium and iridescent plastic, joined together with metal rings to evoke chainmail.
The audacious designs would send a jolt through Paris' traditional haute couture salons - 'he's not a couturier, he's a metal worker, Coco Chanel is said to have sniped - and posited the designer, who first trained as an architect, as fashion's enfant terrible. Alongside fellow couturiers André Courrèges and Pierre Cardin, and furniture designers such as Verner Panton, Arne Jacobsen and Eero Aarnio, he was deemed responsible for ushering in the 'space age' spirit of the late 1960s, which used post-war industrial materials to create a gleaming, utopian vision of the future. 'I defy anyone to design a hat, coat or dress that hasn't been done before, Rabanne said in 1966. The only new frontier left in fashion is the finding of new materials.
In February this year, Rabanne passed away, aged 88, at his home in Brittany. The following month, in Paris, French designer Julien Dossena - creative director of the house since 2013 - presented a collection that he described as a 'coda to the couturier's legacy', ending with five archival dresses and featuring spoken extracts from Rabanne as part of the show's soundtrack. 'Spanning five decades, these dresses will signal the innovative craftsmanship that defines the timeless and totemic women of Paco Rabanne, read the collection notes.
This story is from the September 2023 edition of Wallpaper.
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This story is from the September 2023 edition of Wallpaper.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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Guiding Light - Designer Joe Armitage follows his grandfather's footsteps in India, reissuing his elegant midcentury lamp and creating a new chandelier for Nilufar Gallery
For some of us, family inheritances I tend to be burdensome, taking up space, emotionally and physically, in both our minds and attics. For the London-based designer and architect Joe Armitage, however, a family heirloom has taken him somewhere lighter and brighter, across generations and continents, and into the path of Le Corbusier. This is the story of a lamp designed by Edward Armitage in India 72 years ago, which has today been expanded into a collection of lights by his grandson Joe.
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