PARIS FASHION WEEK

THE PACO RABANNE SHOW AND

HIS SUCCESSFUL ICONIC REINTERPRETATIONS

The Paco Rabanne house punctuated this third day of Paris Fashion Week with a tribute show to its founder, who died on February 3, 2023. It was the first tribute to the "fashion metalworker", so called by Gabrielle Chanel, who died at 88 in Brittany where he lived.

The noise of dresses designed with improbable materials and the voice of Paco Rabanne resonated during this parade in memory of the designer who died in early February.

The role of clothing is to charm, it is to provoke love in others, the love that is the spring of all activity", said the couturier who we could hear during the parade, at the Paris Museum of Modern Art.

More than expected, this Parisian parade symbolizes a turning point for the fashion house Paco Rabanne with its artistic director Julien Dossena

Baptized "Chasing Dream", the parade opened in a rather minimalist setting with the ambition to highlight the silhouette and the garment only. No need for frills when you have such a creative heritage.

Early silhouettes were pretty demure, with fluffy ensembles that looked both modern and timeless.

On the color side, the beginning remains sober with pastel tones, between powder pink and mint green.

Then, little by little, the legacy of Paco Rabanne is felt.

The Dali capsule

Julien Dossena celebrates the historic friendship that linked Paco Rabanne and Salvador Dalí for a capsule with the Dalí Foundation.

Then began an anthology of stylistic retrospectives such as the prints featuring the paintings of Salvador Dali affixed to long dresses with marked waists.

Four of the surrealist painter's paintings adorn the dresses for fall-winter 2023-2024. Among them, The shadows of the falling night (1931) and Solar table (1935).

“The starting point of the collection was really this video of the performance that Dalí did with Paco Rabanne.

The one where Amanda Lear presents Paco Rabanne's dress, where he breaks sewing machines.

This idea really is a concentrate of avant-garde as we can imagine at the time. And from there we contacted the Dalí Foundation, for whom this collaboration also made sense."

Paco Rabanne had met the painter Salvador Dali through one of his muses, the famous Amanda Lear.

It was then a prosperous period, that of the creative Paris of the mid-1960s...

On the catwalk of this fall-winter 2023-24 show, Julien Dossena translates this unique era with ultra-shiny outfits, between sequins, tassels, gold and silver lurex and of course emblematic assembly techniques.

An exploration of textures

Made of aluminum, plastic and chains, Paco's clothes were famous for being as loud as they were revolutionary.

Julien carried on the tradition with a brilliant set of glass and metal cocktail dresses: a technological update of Rabanne's work.

It's a cacophony of sparkles and jingles, from an astonishing crystal ball skirt with a miniature bra to a remarkable metallic sheath where frozen plastic stalactites grow... The dressing room is orchestrated around an exploration textures.

What looks like fur is actually wool, the crystals of a dress take on the appearance of icicles...

An awakening of the senses and a new perceptive dimension which crystallizes more than ever Julien Dossena's vision for the house.

Several gold and silver dresses, maxi and mini, closed the parade by evoking the avant-garde creations of Paco Rabanne who had presented in 1966 his collection 12 improbable dresses in contemporary materials, to immediate success.

The presentation ended with a soundtrack repeating the words of the deceased founder, as a last echo and a nostalgic greeting to the man who, in his own way, reinvented fashion.

"A creative utopia"

His marriage between industry, metal, technology and fashion is perpetuated in this show, with the creations of his successor, Julien Dossena: "Thank you Mr. Rabanne for your creative utopia which has pushed back the boundaries of reality", said for his part says the French artistic director of the house, Julien Dossena, in the note of the parade.

Since the couturier's death, several celebrities have worn the house's creations, designed by Julien Dossena on the red carpet. For the Grammy Awards, the American rapper Cardi B chose a metallic dress associated with a head jewel, evoking the most emblematic creations of Paco Rabanne.

French actress Juliette Binoche wore a black long dress embroidered with sequins on the top and metal mesh on the ruffle of the skirt, to receive an international award in Seville, while Adele wore a black dress with metallic fringes for a of his recent concerts in Las Vegas.