“ Metal looks good on you. I think you wear it well and that’s not‘is not easy, however, because it‘is a very hard material. To wear it, you have to be very modern and I think you are. There is something in you that fits well with what I‘likes of the woman: this distant, modern, hard and at the same time romantic side, which is funny. » The one who made such a statement is Paco Rabanne, nicknamed “the metallurgist of fashion” for his propensity to sculpt and weld material in order to produce sixties dresses and miniskirts.
The one who modestly receives the compliment is none other than Françoise Hardy. The year is 1968 and, despite the apparent shyness of the French singer, captured here by ORTF cameras, the duo knows each other well. So much so that the couturier imagined, the same year, for the interpreter of How to say goodbye to you the most expensive dress in the world. An extra-short tunic made of golden metal plates punctuated with diamonds, as heavy as it is rigid, which nevertheless gives it a crazy look.
That’s what Rabanne likes “to coach women”, as he tells it in many interviews. Not to imprison them, no, but to give them the opportunity to emancipate themselves and resist the attacks of the outside world… “Over time, women became fighters, so I dressed them in‘armor, he explained on Antenne 2 in 1976. With these armors, they try to gain their independence from the‘man. »
Faceted balls
In these outfits, which belong as much to the past as to the future, the women are real Amazons, embodied in the cinema by the unforgettable Jane Fonda Barbarella (1968), also dressed by Paco Rabanne. More recently, it was the American Zendaya who put herself in the shoes of a futuristic warrior by borrowing, during the London premiere of the second part of Dune, the robot suit presented during Thierry Mugler’s fall-winter 1995-1996 haute couture fashion show.
During the 1970s, emancipated women swapped their armor for fluid dresses with metallic highlights by the flamboyant American designer Halston, which they showed off on the runway at Studio 54 in New York. The time is dancing queens, ABBA is a hit and, in Saturday night fever (1977), Lurex dresses and blouses threaded with copper or iron threads shine brightly under the mirror balls.
If the lights of these clubs ended up going out, metal kept its festive spirit, illuminating the winter locker rooms and other end-of-year celebrations. Thanks to summer trends, here it is coming out in broad daylight, in small touches (tassels, embroidery, sequins) or in total look.
