Why a New Documentary on Paco Rabanne Was Five Years in the Making
MILAN — “Are you a provoker?” asks a voice-over.
“Oh la la, oui! A provocateur to goad people. I was different, I was something else,” replies another, in a mix of French and Spanish. Only this was the voice of the late visionary fashion designer and perfume legend Paco Rabanne, in an excerpt of his last interview, conducted seven months before he died in 2023.
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The voice-only interview is at the center of a new documentary dedicated to the Spanish-born designer titled “Paco Rabanne. Una vida fuera del patrón,” or “Paco Rabanne. A Life Outside the Box” in English.
Premiered with a private screening at Fondazione Sozzani here on Thursday, the film sheds light not only on the futuristic creativity of the fashion maverick, his Space Age aesthetic and daring use of industrial and nonconventional materials such as plastic, metal and paper, but also on his human side, childhood anecdotes and influences outside the fashion world.
“This documentary includes Paco’s last interview — and actually the first in 20 years of complete isolation from the media world,” said the film’s director and screenwriter Pepa Ramos ahead of the screening. “His choice to get away from the social and mediatic life tracing back to 2002 was self-imposed, and on one hand this production wanted to protect such a decision, but on the other we felt the need to have his testimony… It took us five years to manage to do so, three of which only to get to speak with him and convince him to take part in the project and tell his story.”
The 100-minute film opens with registration of the multiple calls to the designer, heard politely declining or postponing the offer of a chat. Ramos recalled how Daniel Rabaneda, Rabanne’s nephew and fashion designer himself, was pivotal in getting in touch with him and therefore to the making of the documentary.
Rabaneda’s personal mission was to reclaim Rabanne’s role especially in Spain, as he mentioned that often times he is still mistakenly taken for a French designer in his homeland. “I hope there will be many other projects such as exhibitions, books and documentaries to follow, because Paco’s persona is vast and so interesting for our generation. You can learn a lot from his talent as much as from his human side.”
“He’s a multifaceted man. He wasn’t just a designer, but a visionary at 360 degrees,” echoed Rosemary Rodriguez, former creative director of the brand who worked alongside Rabanne. She mentioned his side projects in support of music and artistic communities, as well as his role as “fantastic team player” who created a family environment. “We worked but it never felt like working,” said Rodriguez.
Both Rabaneda and Rodriguez appear in the documentary, alongside interviews from Jean Paul Gaultier; Julien Dossena, who has been creative director of the Paco Rabanne fashion house since 2013 but shared that he never got the chance to meet the founder; Vincent Thilloy, chief brand officer for Paco Rabanne, and Jean Paul Gaultier, which are both owned by Spanish fragrance and fashion group Puig; ágatha Ruiz de la Prada; Carla Sozzani, and Rabanne’s muse Kathy Jean-Louis, among others. Fashion professors, models and close friends also feature in the film, alternating their memories with Rabanne’s old interviews, vintage footage from his shows and animations depicting his childhood.
Significant attention is put on the designer’s family ties and early years. Born on Feb. 18, 1934, as Francisco Rabaneda y Cuervo in the Spanish Basque town of Pasa?a, he was confronted with mourning and exile at a tender age. Rabanne was barely five years old when his father — who was in the Spanish Republican army — was shot by the Francoists, causing his family to flee. The episode is a recurrent theme throughout the documentary, with Rabanne admitting he spent all his life “thinking about my father, who I’ve never met.”
With his mother and grandmother, Rabanne crossed the Pyrenees by foot to reach Brittany, in Morlaix, a region in France for which he developed a deep attachment. Later on his education took him to Paris, where he studied for a decade at the école Nationale des Beaux-Arts, first focusing on architecture before sketching clothes and sculpting fabrics.
His mother was a head seamstress at Balenciaga. The film highlights the role the famous couturier played in influencing Rabanne to pivot to fashion, as he defined Cristóbal Balenciaga “an emperor of fashion” and “an example.”
As for his own journey, the film puts emphasis on his first, disruptive show in 1966. After changing his name to Paco Rabanne “because Rabaneda sounded bad in French,” the designer unveiled his “12 Unwearable Dresses” collection at the H?tel George V on Feb. 1 that year. Barefoot models wearing Rhodoid plastic cut into strips and held together by metal rings strutted down the runway to the strains of Pierre Boulez, provoking some outraged reactions.
More innovations that followed and fueled his Spage Age aesthetic included chain-mail “dresses” in hammered or studded aluminum; paper wedding gowns; coats composed of metal triangles; elastic-band clothes made from fringed rubber, and a white mink and steel disc bolero.
“Until 1968, everything was so bourgeois and classic. He anticipated by two years what would have happened in London and in the whole of Europe,” said Sozzani in the film.
Rabanne’s pioneering spirit and talent in embodying the zeitgeist of the ’60s were expressed by its combination of sci-fi futurist aesthetic with medieval workmanship, which Gaultier repeatedly and enthusiastically praises in the documentary. If metal was seen as a protection for men up to that moment, Rabanne flipped the perception making the material feminine, seductive and empowering for women.
Yet there was the occasional detractor. A film clip points out how Coco Chanel said at the time that “Paco Rabanne is not a designer, he’s a metal worker” — a characterization that Rabanne long celebrated. Gaultier also recalled how he saw a magazine comparing the two designers before starting his own career in fashion and how he favored Rabanne because he was “more innovative” and “offered new things.”
The advent of youthful styles in fashion, the Mod revolution, rock music and the spirit of experimentation further emboldened a youthful Rabanne, whose creations were donned by the likes of Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin, as well as French singer Fran?oise Hardy, who modeled a “jewel dress” built from nine kilos of pure gold at the international diamond fair in 1968. Soon the designer was also recruited by Hollywood, outfitting Jane Fonda for the 1968 camp hit “Barbarella” and Audrey Hepburn in the 1966 film “Two for the Road.”
But the scope of Rabanne’s revolution transcended clothes. The documentary highlights how he was among the first designers to hire Black models and include music at his shows, smartly interrupted to let the metallic rustle of his dresses to take center stage.
His pioneering role in perfumery is also celebrated via mentions to his first fragrance Calandre launched in 1969 and kick-starting the long-standing bond between Rabanne and Puig; the Paco Rabanne Pour Homme in 1973, which paved the way for the brand’s blockbuster men’s scent portfolio, and the landmark Metal launched in 1979, to name a few.
Other themes include his relationship with Salvador Dalí and shared passion for drawing, provocation and the esoteric — another key topic in the film. From the first mystical experience with his grandmother at the age of 7 to his frequent conversations on reincarnation in adulthood, the documentary shows the importance of religion and spirituality in Rabanne’s life.
Meditating, praying, reading and drawing were among the activities that marked his years once he retired from the fashion scene after his last couture show in 1999.
“I’m no longer a creator. I’ve been a creator, but everything has an end,” he said in the documentary. “Since I’ve stopped making fashion, I’ve lost interest for it.”
Asked if he regrets anything, the designer is heard replying: “of getting old.” After a pause, he added: “No, I don’t regret anything,” before jokingly chanting the chorus of Edith Piaf’s song, “Non, je ne regrette rien.”
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