Paco Rabanne

Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo born 18 February 1934 more commonly known under the pseudonym of Paco Rabanne is a Spanish fashion designer who became known as an enfant terrible of the 1960s French fashion world Rabanne was born 18 February 1934 in the Basque town of Pasajes Gipuzkoa province His father a Republican Colonel was executed by Francoist troops during the Spanish Civil War Rabannes mother was chief seamstress at Cristóbal Balenciagas first couture house in Donostia Basque Country and moved Rabannes family when he opened Balenciaga in Paris in 1937 due to the Spanish Civil War In mid1950s Paris while studying architecture at lÉcole Nationale des BeauxArts Rabanne earned money making fashion sketches for Dior and Givenchy and shoe sketches for Charles Jourdan nevertheless he subsequently took a job with Frances foremost developer of reinforced concrete Auguste Perret working there for over ten years He started his career in fashion by creating jewelry for Givenchy Dior and Balenciaga and founded his own fashion house in 1966 He used unconventional material such as metal paper and plastic for his metal couture and outlandish and flamboyant designs For the debut of his namesake brand in 1966 he presented Manifesto 12 unwearable dresses in contemporary materials Rabanne is known for the green costume worn by Jane Fonda in the 1968 sciencefiction film Barbarella Françoise Hardy was a big fan of Rabannes designs For Tour 1996 and the resulting Live à Bercy singer Mylène Farmer had Rabanne do her liveconcert stage costumes In 1968 he began collaborating with fragrance company Puig which resulted in the company marketing Rabannes perfumes In 1976 the company built a perfume factory in Chartres France In the 1980s in Brazil his mens perfume brand registration was forfeited due to a court judgement that the brand was never officially present in Brazil despite heavy advertising and a strong local awareness The court reasoned that because the Puigs local distributor was smuggling perfume into Brazil the company could not show proof of payment of import duties It took six or seven years to recover his brand name in Brazil Paco Rabanne is famous for his eccentric statements on television He claims he has lived several lives including that of a prostitute in the time of Louis XV to have known Jesus in a previous life to have seen God three times to have been visited by extraterrestrials to have murdered Tutankhamun14 and to be 75000 years old15 In 1999 he announced that at the age of seventeen he had had visions of Parisians in flames throwing themselves into the Seine and that after studying other concordant prophecies he came to the conclusion that the Mir space station was going to crash in France at the time of the solar eclipse of August 11 1999 its debris causing thousands of deaths in Paris and in the Gers region On 10 May 1999 he publicly undertakes not to make any more predictions if Mir does not crash into Paris on 11 August 1999 However he claims to have had an apparition of the Virgin Mary telling him to continue the predictions Source Article Paco Rabanne from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30