‘Hedonistic and avant-garde’: Rabanne’s Julien Dossena on the legacy of the chainmail 1969 bag

Three hundred and sixty-seven gleaming ‘pastilles’ of metal, each one attached together by hand, make up Rabanne’s ‘1969’ chainmail handbag, an emblem of the eponymous designer’s utopian vision for fashion which – alongside André Courrèges and Pierre Cardin – would define the Space Age spirit of the 1960s. ‘I defy anyone to design a hat, coat or dress that hasn’t been done before,’ Paco Rabanne said in 1966. ‘The only new frontier left in fashion is the finding of new materials.’ Metal would become his favoured medium, creating pieces in chainmail and metal paillettes that looked descended from another planet.

‘When you wear Rabanne chainmail, it’s really a feeling. There is a sensation between the garment and the skin,’ current creative director Julien Dossena told Wallpaper* in the September 2023 Style Issue. ‘He was fighting against the old rules, the old world. Even aesthetically, he didn’t understand couture, and he didn’t want to understand.’

‘Hedonistic and avant-garde’: Julien Dossena on the ‘1969’ bag

That said, the ‘1969’ handbag had more humble beginnings, its starting point a steel apron traditionally worn by butchers in France to protect them from the sharp implements of their trade. Using just a pair of pliers – of a type still used to attach the bag's hooks and pastilles today – the apron’s protective disks were recrafted into the simple, foldover bag. Its original handles were made from the handles of toilet flush chains, recalling Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades.

’It was on its own a symbol of design in the 20th century, and has become timeless – super desirable, culturally charged and radical at the same time,’ says Dossena as the ‘1969’ bag becomes central to his evolution of Rabanne, which last year saw the house drop the ‘Paco’ (there was also the launch of a Diane Kendal-led Rabanne make-up line in similarly Space Age packaging, and a clothing and homeware collaboration with H&M, which included sequin-disk door curtains and lamps). ’It was not even a question to revive it because it was living its life already.’

Of its particular appeal – which has seen numerous iterations, including the ‘nano’ and ‘mini’, the latter the size of an iPhone – Dossena credits the way it evokes ‘a lifestyle, hedonistic and avant-garde, sensual and modernist’. Indeed, its sinous form is designed to trace the line of the body – like the house’s chainmail gowns, immortalised by Jane Fonda in Barbarella – and was worn by figures of French cinema like Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda. So distinctive was its design in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it needed no label or logo (something that endures over half a century on). Wearers also talk of a signature ‘swish’ sound upon movement.

‘It’s all handmade,’ says Dossena of the bag’s unique brand of savoir-faire. ‘The rings which link the metal pieces are all opened and closed with a plier. It’s really demanding craft [but it] creates that magic articulated liquid-like metal.’

As for how he hopes a woman might feel wearing the ‘1969’ – which he brought back at the start of his tenure – he hopes it reflects the liberated spirit of the era in which it was created. ‘I hope they feel like they are wearing an extraordinary piece of craft,’ he says. ’I want them to feel free to mix it with their own clothes.’ Summer 2024 sees the addition of 1969 bags adorned with colourful raffia fringing, gobstopper ‘pampille’ pendants and golden medals (an apt accessory for an Olympic summer).

It is all part of the evolution of Rabanne that has taken place under Dossena’s ten-year tenure, a relative lifetime in the ever-turning merry-go-round of designer appointments and exits. ‘Now, there’s a perception of the brand that is completely different [to when I started],’ he said last year. ‘First, it was the industry insiders that were sceptical about what Rabanne could be. Then we got them on side. Now, Rabanne is going mainstream. I can feel the evolution.’

The ‘1969’ bag is available from Rabanne’s website, as well as at Selfridges.

fashion.rabanne.com