Spanish fashion designer Paco Rabanne has died at the age of 88, it has been announced.
Rabanne, whose real name was Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo, founded the famous fashion house named after him in 1966.
Together with the French designers Pierre Cardin and Andre Courreges, he contributed to the Parisian fashion status quo of the time, which earned him the moniker “terrible enfant”.
A statement on its official Instagram account said: “The House of Paco Rabanne wishes to pay tribute to our visionary designer and founder who died today at the age of 88.
“Among the most significant fashion figures of the 20th century, her legacy will continue to be a source of inspiration.
Paco Rabanne – In pictures
“We are grateful to Monsieur Rabanne for establishing our avant-garde heritage and for defining a future full of possibilities.”
Born in 1934 in the Basque Country, he escaped the Spanish Civil War by fleeing to France at the age of five with his mother, a chief designer at Balenciaga.
He first studied architecture at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris and began his fashion career in the early 1960s with a large collection of plastic accessories which he sold to the couture houses.
Rabanne moved on to fashion garments that reflected the cultural climate of the mid-1960s and created fashion with unconventional and imaginative production methods using novel post-war industrial materials.
For his first couture collection in 1966, he presented “12 irresistible dresses in contemporary materials”, including a chain-inspired minidress made from aluminum plates.
His designs have been worn by global stars over the years including Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Blackpink.
The fashion house was also a commercial success with its perfume range, and its first fragrance, Calandre, is still available today.
Lady Million, with its eye-catching gold-capped bottle, remains a bestseller and is widely available.
After a career spanning three decades, he retired from the design house in 1999.