Craig Green Fall/Winter 2020

Maison Rabanne's very first show took place on February 1, 1966, at the Hôtel George V in Paris, built around a founding manifesto. The collection featured pieces made of rhodoid (a type of plastic) discs and lamella linked together by metal rings, giving birth to Rabanne's signature "assemblage" technique, alongside experiments in materials like paper. The show was groundbreaking beyond materials too: it was the first fashion show in history to feature Black models on the runway, and the first ever set to a musical composition, Pierre Boulez's "Le Marteau sans Maître," with models walking barefoot. Rabanne's fascination with unconventional materials, metal chief among them, earned him the nickname "the metallurgist of fashion" and a place alongside Cardin and Courrèges in fashion's "Space Age" movement. Coco Chanel, unimpressed, sniffed that "he's not a couturier, he's a metal worker," a jab Rabanne might have taken as a compliment. Two years later, he applied the same metal-and-plastic techniques to costume the 1968 sci-fi film Barbarella.

Thierry Mugler's 1995 "Robot Couture," officially titled Machinenmensch ("Machine Human"), was a metal-and-plexiglass cyborg bodysuit unveiled at his fashion house's 20th-anniversary haute couture show, modeled by Nadja Auermann. Mugler developed the suit over six months with artist Jean-Jacques Urcun and aircraft bodywork specialist Jean-Pierre Delcros, blending chrome-plated panels, sheer plexiglass inserts, and corset-like structuring so rigid it forced Auermann into a slow, mechanical "robotic striptease" down the runway. The piece paid tribute to Futura, the robotic character from Thea von Harbou's 1925 dystopian novel Metropolis, brought to the screen two years later in Fritz Lang's landmark 1927 silent film of the same name. The suit resurfaced decades later when Zendaya wore it to the Dune: Part Two premiere in 2024, styled by Law Roach.

At an Oscars after-party in 2001, Gillian Anderson wore a long-sleeve minimal dress by Eduardo Lucero, bold cutouts exposing her bare back and a mesh thong, paired with just sunglasses as accessories. Nearly two decades later, Fashionista credited the look as a foundational moment for the modern "exposed thong dress" trend. Also, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon cleared every movie nominated that year.