Disc dress

The disc dress exists in two principal variants introduced at different points in Rabanne's career — a plastic disc version and a metal disc version. The plastic version, introduced in the February 1966 collection,^[1] is constructed from small iridescent rhodoid plastic discs linked together with metal jump rings, which gave the dresses a shimmering, light-catching appearance. The metal version, first presented in Rabanne's July 1966 collection alongside leather and ring-linked garments, is constructed from small aluminium plates — including square, rectangular, triangular, and circular disc forms — hand-linked one by one with metal wire rings, producing a structure Rabanne described as his "armor look". The construction closely resembles historical chainmail armour, an allusion that was widely noted by fashion critics at the time; Women's Wear Daily wrote of his 1967 collection that his models came out "like Valkyries".^[2]

Because the dresses were assembled without the use of sewing,^[3] Rabanne worked with pliers rather than needles.^[4] Rabanne described his design philosophy in the following terms: "I thought a woman working all day in flat-heeled shoes and sensible suits needed to recapture her mystery and femininity in the evening. It was up to me to supply her with a sort of second skin — rustling, iridescent, phosphorescent, soft yet sharp, supple yet rigid, transparent yet opaque".^[2] Rabanne's decision not to use sewing — which he regarded as "slavery" — was criticized by the Paris fashion world as a "subversion of couture".^[3] Coco Chanel dismissed Rabanne as a "metal worker", rather than a couturier.^[3]

The disc dress attracted immediate and widespread media attention following the 1966 collection.^[4] Rabanne himself attributed his success to the garment's shock value, stating that "my dresses are successful because they are shocking. It's impossible for a woman to wear one and not be noticed".^[2] Vogue described the 1966 collection as a "flash of double-daring-do", and called the disc dress "cloth[ing] for intergalactic warriors and social butterflies".^[5]

The dresses were adopted rapidly by prominent figures in European and North American popular culture.^[6][4] Françoise Hardy made history in 1968 by wearing a Rabanne gold disc dress, then described as the "most expensive dress in the world".^[7] Jane Birkin and Brigitte Bardot were also among the early wearers of Rabanne's chainmail and disc designs.^[4][5][8] Audrey Hepburn wore a Paco Rabanne dress in Stanley Donen's Two for the Road.^[9][5] Rabanne designed plastic dresses for John Huston's Casino Royale and Jean-Luc Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her. Rabanne also designed Jane Fonda's costumes — a series of linked plastic and metal garments — in Roger Vadim's 1968 science fiction film Barbarella.^[9][10]

The disc dress is regarded as one of the central objects of the Space Age fashion movement of the 1960s.^[11] The Metropolitan Museum of Art wrote that "with its allusion to chain mail, the dress epitomizes Rabanne's practice of citing historical elements in a space-age aesthetic".^[12]

Both plastic and metal versions of the disc dress are held in several major museum collections. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds at least two documented examples, a 1966 iridescent plastic disc mini dress and an aluminium plate dress from the Twelve Unwearable Dresses collection.^[13][12] New York City's Museum of Modern Art holds the Barbarella costumes.^[9] The Rabanne house, revived after the designer's retirement in 1999 and his death in February 2023, retains the linked disc motif as a signature design element.^[14]

In 1996, on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of his fashion house, Rabanne released a limited-edition do-it-yourself version of the disc dress. Packaged in a suitcase-shaped box, the kit contained plastic discs, metal rings, and two logoed clips, allowing the purchaser to assemble their own version of the original 1966 design.^[4] As part of Rabanne's spring/summer 2021 collection, then-creative director Julian Dossena designed a range of metallic disc dresses similar to the 1966 collection.^[6]