Paco Rabanne made dresses out of metal before he made perfume. His first collections used plastic discs, aluminium and chain mail, which made him the enfant terrible of 1960s Paris fashion.
The fashion house started in 1966. The founder was Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo, a Spanish designer born in 1934 who went by Paco Rabanne. The perfume came three years later. Calandre launched in 1969, a metallic rose aldehyde that matched the hard-edged clothes.
The Spanish beauty group Puig took over the fashion and fragrance business in 1986 and still owns it. That matters, because Puig is where the modern blockbusters came from. One Million launched in 2008, a sweet cinnamon-and-leather scent sold in a gold ingot bottle. It was reportedly the last fragrance Paco Rabanne himself helped develop.
Invictus followed in July 2013, a fresh grapefruit and marine scent in a trophy-shaped bottle, built by a team that included Olivier Polge and Dominique Ropion. It became one of the best-selling men's sport fragrances in Europe.
Here is the honest part. Paco Rabanne the man stepped back from design in the late 1990s and died in February 2023. The perfumes still carry his name, but they are Puig products, made by contract perfumers and sold in the tens of millions. Both One Million and Invictus now sit around £60 to £90 for a full bottle.
You do not need the gold ingot to get the effect. Our One Fortune, our take on One Million, and Invicto, our take on Invictus, are UK-made sprays at 35% concentration. Browse the Paco Rabanne collection or read the best Paco Rabanne dupes in the UK.
