Review of Paco Rabanne Fall 2023 Fashion Show
Rabanne’s Voice Rings Louder Than Ever
By Mark Wittmer
The brand’s first show since the passing of its trailblazing eponymous founder, Paco Rabanne’s Fall 2023 outing was a worthy celebration of the designer’s most memorable contributions to fashion. This year also marks the tenth year of creative director Julien Dossena’s renowned tenure at the house, and as much as the collection was about surveying a historic legacy and referencing art-deco or space-age style movements, his work continues to embody the designer’s status as a champion of innovation, imagination, and forward thinking.
Tapping into Rabanne’s rich and inventive understanding of construction and material – with regards to metal in particular – as well as his artistic connections, Dossena delivers an ultra-lux ode to the contemporary style explorer.
While illuminated throughout by metal detailing and accessories, the collection smartly unfolds across material movements, moving from mohair and faux fur through glittery metallic fibers, to lush silks, before ending on a spectacular finale of crystal and metal plating.
The opening ultra fluffy knit mohair sets and long coats trimmed with plush faux fur are tempered by casual sneakers – the collection’s one concession to contemporary luxury fashion styling’s insistence on playing to everyday, flexible dressing. But the move works, and seems to suggest that, even if the styling of the show itself maintains a sublime focus, each woman is encouraged to experiment with the way she wears these pieces in real life.
The knitwear soon gets an utterly glam treatment with a dress whose top section composed of knitted gold fibers flows into a shimmering cascade of silver as it blossoms outward from the hips – a piece that marks the collection’s transition into the increasingly intricate and luxurious.
Dresses that are similarly gathered at the hip and move in a uniquely rippling way with the motion of the wearer see vibrant floral-printed silks alternate with sensual and delicate sheer black lace. Form-fitting silk dresses make use of cutouts and gathering to accentuate the sinuousness of silhouette, and, as if they’ve stepped out of an alternate timeline, feature intricate art-deco motifs of crystal and metal. Rabanne’s close friendship and creative collaboration with Salvador Dalí is given beautiful new life in a series of dresses that make all-over use of some of the surrealist’s most iconic paintings, while also acting as a vehicle for some of Dossena’s most inventive use of paneling and construction.
An impressive balance of delicacy and strength is contained in the sculpted crystal or metal flowers that work as chest pieces, feminine armor that both protects and reveals. Elsewhere, crystal and metal are rendered surprisingly fluid through the use of repetition and elongation, and the chain-mail construction that characterized Rabanne’s most famous pieces, and that would return to close out the show.
For the final quarter of the show’s runtime, the delicate baroque soundtrack faded out to be replaced by a voiceover from Rabanne himself: sound bites of the designer reflecting on his unique approach and the bold modern figure of the woman who wears his metallic dresses, stitched together with retro-futurist bleeps and bloops. Set to this sonic background, a series of chainmail dresses that directly revisited Rabanne’s iconic archival designs gave the collection a fitting finale.
It’s a testament both to Rabanne’s vision and to Dossena’s understanding of it that these almost 50-year-old pieces feel just as relevant at the end of this collection as they did when they first stunned Parisian critics in the late 60s.
The original creation of Paco Rabanne’s metallic dress reflected its place in time in terms of both technical and social progress. It was the end of the metallic age; men were going into space; everybody had to have the latest car or washing machine. Meanwhile, ideas of liberation were picking up; outdated and restrictive morals were being reconsidered; people, and especially women, were able to act more freely – a change that was directly embodied in the way they could dress.
While in a way lots of things have changed since then, the moment contained in this dress still doesn’t seem to have passed. By revisiting it and seamlessly synthesizing the contemporary of today with the contemporary of the past, Dossena amplifies Rabanne’s original claim that our understanding of the world and our place in it was contained in and restricted by what we wore – and that, in order to change the world, we need visionaries to change how we dress.