Paco Rabanne obituary

Designer of radical metal and plastic garments, who later became known for his bestselling perfumes

The 1966 Paris show of Paco Rabanne, who has died aged 88, was outrageous, and immediately set him together with André Courrèges as a designer of what was thought to be the future but turned out only to be a passing phase.

Rabanne called that debut collection Manifesto: 12 Unwearable Dresses in Contemporary Materials. He showed on both black and white models, who went barefoot because he could not afford to shoe them, brief dresses assembled of plaques of metal or Rhodoid, an organic plastic, linked flexibly by wire ties. Paris fulminated. Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel said: “He’s a metalworker not a couturier.” However New York, especially Vogue’s Diana Vreeland and the Herald Tribune’s Eugenia Sheppard, enjoyed the textile alternatives. The art collector Peggy Guggenheim bought and wore them.