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PACO Rabanne felt driven to give me proof of the compelling erotic power of his metal-plated, mirror-eyed, hotly-soldered, chain-mail frocks for girls in heat. `A celebrated Italian manufacturer came in one day and said: `I want a metal robe for this young woman.' She was a beautiful young person who was not his wife. But the dress was just slightly too large. I told him: `Do not worry! Come back in four or five days and it will be adjusted.' `No, no, no, no' he said. `It is for immediate consumption.' `Immediate consumption!' Paco Rabanne raised one meticulously brushed eyebrow in discreet insinuation.
`On the premises?' I said in amazement, looking around the cool, grey-green chamber which had some of the luminosity of an underwater world. M Rabanne prefers his environments to have a suggestive, luminious swarthiness.
`Of course not.' There was minuscule rebuke in his voice. `He probably had a private apartment nearby.' `How much did you charge him?' I asked.
`Since the dress was to be torn off for immediate consumption I multiplied the price by a factor of two,' he said.
Paco Rabanne, griffin of Parisian haute couture, is still a denizen of the Left Bank while the other great names of couture hug the Champs Elysees. He also claims to be a prophet come originally from the `crystal' planet in the constellation of the Eagle, 7,800 years ago, during which time he has enjoyed innumerable re-incarnations.
He began to expound his views on voguish arousal: `Woman has need of fashion to physically excite Man,' he said. `A woman is passivity; man is erection. A woman requires make-up, perfume, clothes to excite the man.' Some of his dresses are fronted by a series of mirrors. I told him I found this disconcerting: you want to look at the woman but you find yourself looking at yourself. `What is the search for love?' he asked, and not even rhetorically. `It is the quest of the human being for The Other who is hidden in One. Man was the first androgyne and Woman was hidden in his liver.' `His liver? You mean his rib?' But the liver has a particular fascination for Parisians. (Every little belly twitch or sore head is described as...