Rabanne and Julien Dossena part ways after 13 years

Rabanne has parted ways with Julien Dossena after 13 years, ending the designer’s long run at the helm of the house just as it marks its 60th anniversary in 2026. The brand confirmed the move on June 24, 2026 and said a successor “will be announced in due course.”

Dossena joined Rabanne in 2013 and spent more than a decade translating Paco Rabanne’s metallic legacy into something that felt current, wearable and runway-ready. During his tenure, he modernized the label’s iconic chainmail, sharpened the house’s futuristic codes and gave Rabanne a more polished French ease, the kind that could move from the front row to a crowded party without losing its edge. The result was a label that became a reliable Paris Fashion Week draw and one of the clearest success stories in the recent wave of fashion-house reinventions.

The house made the succession sound orderly rather than abrupt. Rabanne said Dossena had “profoundly shaped a new era for Rabanne,” while Ana Trias, Puig’s president of prestige and fashion brands, called his work “exceptional creative direction” and said he wrote a “remarkable chapter” for the brand. Puig owns Rabanne, and the language signals continuity: the next designer is being asked to inherit a fully formed identity, not rescue a stalled one.

That identity is now the strategic brief. Rabanne’s metallic heritage remains the brand’s sharpest signature, but it only matters if it still reads as desirable rather than archival. The same goes for partywear, where Dossena helped make the house feel like a destination for evening dressing that was glossy, modern and camera-ready. Celebrity visibility is part of that equation too: Rabanne has long traded on the kind of high-impact looks that travel well on red carpets and social feeds, and the next creative lead will have to protect that energy without letting it flatten into formula.

The timing also matters. Dossena had already shown Rabanne’s Spring/Summer 2026 and Fall/Winter 2026 collections before the announcement, and the brand’s site still described its ready-to-wear as designed by Julien Dossena as the transition began. In fashion, that overlap often marks the clean handoff between one chapter and the next, and Rabanne is moving into its next one with the hardest part already built: a recognizable code, a strong runway rhythm and a name that still means something on a night out.