Fashion designer Paco Rabanne dies at age of 88

Rabanne, whose real name was Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo, founded the renowned fashion house named after him in 1966.

Alongside French designers Pierre Cardin and Andre Courreges, he helped upset the status quo of Paris fashion of the time, earning him the moniker of “enfant terrible”.

A statement on his official Instagram account said: “The House of Paco Rabanne wishes to honour our visionary designer and founder who passed away today at the age of 88.

“Among the most seminal fashion figures of the 20th century, his legacy will remain a constant source of inspiration.

“We are grateful to Monsieur Rabanne for establishing our avant-garde heritage and defining a future of limitless possibilities.”

Born in 1934 in the Basque Country, he escaped the Spanish Civil War by fleeing to France at the age of five alongside his mother, a head seamstress at Balenciaga.

He initially studied architecture at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris and began his fashion career in the early 1960s with a collection of large plastic accessories he sold to the couture houses.

Rabanne went on to fashion garments reflective of the mid-1960s cultural climate and created fashion with uncharted and imaginative production methods using novel postwar industrial materials.

For his debut couture collection in 1966, he presented “12 unwearable dresses in contemporary materials”, which included a chain mail-inspired minidress made of aluminium plates.