AW12 Paco Rabanne at Totem PR Paris
The Paco Rabanne Office
When it comes to fashion history I can just about recognise the decades thanks to Disney princesses (gets a little fuzzy when it comes to Mary Poppins though) (Does she even count as a princess? I always thought she’s more of a witch…) so I’d like to apologize first if you’ve spent a week in a dusty library memorizing the influence of Alberto Giacometti in the work of Schiaparelli for your fashion exam. I say this because I had no idea who Paco Rabanne was, even when I was buzzing up to the showroom in Paris I was in the dark as I hadn’t had a chance to look anything up. Mind, this is highly irregular, for someone who even looks up her postman in Google. This is also irregular, for someone who owns MANY bags of jumprings and pliers.
Paco Rabanne, simply put, is the father of unwearable, fantastic, otherworldly garment concepts. Think dresses pieced together with metal chips, paper, plastics, rubber. Think early 60’s, the novelty of the decade is tie-dye and shorter skirt lengths – the architect turned designer produces dresses out of metal sequins so that the light catches the texture brilliantly on black & white TV. If your dress breaks, the tools you have in your bag can also fix your drainpipe. After years of hiatus in the design front, the brand is designing again with Manish Arora leading the creative. I’m loving how he’s managed to take all that history and character and translate it into such a sleek wearable collection. Chainmail and fuzzy knits, so Joan of Arc.
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A big thank you to the Paco Rabanne team for the warm welcome, and Ykone for the organization.
