Paco Rabanne, fashion designer, 1934-2023

When applied to clothes, “unwearable” is usually a criticism. But the word was celebrated by designer Paco Rabanne when he dubbed his 1966 collection “12 Unwearable Dresses in Contemporary Materials”. The radical garments, made from plastic and metal strips and discs, launched him into the popular consciousness as an avant-garde yet glamorous designer. He was behind some of the 1960s most memorable looks.

Rabanne, who has died aged 88, was a modernising figure on the 1960s fashion scene, creating designs that chimed with the decade’s obsession with space travel. He is associated with the “space age” movement in fashion, along with André Courrèges and Pierre Cardin, who all captured the era’s youthful energy in different ways.

Rabanne was born Francisco Rabaneda y Cuervo in 1934, in the Basque region of Spain. He was introduced to style early through his mother’s position as head seamstress at Cristóbal Balenciaga’s couture atelier in San Sebastián. But he and his mother fled to France after his Republican colonel father was killed by Francoist soldiers during the Spanish civil war.

Between 1951 and 1963, Rabanne studied architecture at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He supported himself by selling buttons and creating sketches for prestigious fashion houses such as Balenciaga, Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent and Chanel. In 1965, he created fun, optical art jewellery made from rhodoid plastic, dubbed Pacotilles.

The designer considered the “12 Unwearable Dresses” a manifesto for his creative approach. The Hotel George V in Paris provided the backdrop as models paraded to the disconcertingly skittish strains of composer Pierre Boulez’s surrealist work Le Marteau sans Maître. Unlike a traditional tailor with a needle and thread, he used pliers, hammers and blowtorches, and declared “the death of cloth”. Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel described him as a “metallurgist de la mode.”

Alexandre Samson, fashion curator and historian at the Palais Galliera museum, described the designer as “a trailblazer for his use of materials. He was the first high-fashion designer to turn his back on classical fabric.” His “unique structures” were mixed, said Samson, with “influences from Ancient Egypt, Medieval times and the Middle East”.

The magic of Rabanne’s creations wasn’t limited to how they looked. In a 2002 New York Times article, veteran fashion editor Polly Mellen recalled that when she tried his clothes on, she found them “balanced in a very beautiful way, in a very engineered way”. Mellen also described witnessing a woman arriving at a Mozart concert in a mermaid-like disc dress — a Rabanne creation. “She walked in late and stopped the concert because she sounded like a wind chime.”

In the 1960s, Rabanne’s designs were worn by some of the stars who defined the age: popular French singer Françoise Hardy, Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin. He designed costumes for Jane Fonda in Barbarella and for Audrey Hepburn in Two for the Road. He also worked with Salvador Dalí, who once said: “There are only two geniuses in Spain: me and Paco Rabanne.”

Rabanne’s personal wardrobe was minimal, consisting of black shirts in either workmanlike or monastic cuts, and his lifestyle was simple. He did, however, hold some unexpected views. He believed that he had led past lives, and subscribed to the predictions of Nostradamus.

In 1968 Puig, the Spanish luxury company, acquired Paco Rabanne parfums and later created Calandre, a rose perfume with a metallic hint intended to suggest “lovemaking in a Rolls-Royce”. Other notable fragrances included Paco Rabanne Pour Homme released in 1973, and 1 Million which came in 2008.

José Manuel Albesa, president of the beauty and fashion division at Puig, said of Rabanne: “He made transgression magnetic. Who else could induce fashionable Parisian women to clamour for dresses made of plastic and metal? Who but Paco Rabanne could imagine a fragrance called Calandre — the word means ‘automobile grill’, you know — and turn it into an icon of modern femininity?”

Rabanne retired from fashion in 1999. But his eponymous label’s cachet has been boosted in recent years under creative director Julien Dossena, who has reinvented the label’s signature metalwork and minidresses for modern, party-loving clients.

Samson said: “There is a dream in fashion among designers that they can produce seamless clothes, and in his own way Paco Rabanne succeeded in doing that because he produced assemblages which weren’t related to seams anymore. It was another way of creating clothes.”

carola.long@ft.com