Pierre Cardin Fashion Designer

Pierre Cardin Fashion Designer, whose Space Age style was among the iconic looks of 20th-century fashion, has died at 98, France’s Academy of Fine Arts says.

Pierre Cardin was an Italian-born French designer who transitioned from the world of custom-made high fashion for private clients to designing ready-to-wear clothes for the masses.

During his more than seven decades in fashion, he introduced geometric shapes into haute couture and left his name on everything from clothes to perfumes to pens.

Pierre Cardin Fashion Designer

The visionary designer, known as a pioneer of ready-to-wear clothing, was the son of Italian immigrants and died in the morning at the American Hospital in Paris in Neuilly, west of Paris, according to AFP.

He was known for his avant-garde style, with a penchant for geometric shapes and motifs. He also ventured into unisex fashion, which was sometimes too experimental to wear.

By introducing ready-to-wear collections, Cardin made high fashion more accessible to the middle class.

He founded his fashion house in 1950 and achieved worldwide success with the introduction of his famous Bubble Dress in 1954, which is credited with revolutionizing fashion styles with its futuristic looks and designs in the 1960s and 70s.

Cardin was also a pioneer in business, successfully licensing his brand name for a variety of products including sunglasses and perfumes.

Cardin was born on July 2, 1922, in a French wine merchant’s family near Treviso, Italy. He was the last of eleven children. His parents wanted him to become an architect, but his interests always lay in fashion and design.

Pierre Cardin, who during his more than seven decades in fashion brought geometric shapes to haute couture and put his name on everything from clothes to pens to perfumes to furniture, died Tuesday. He was 98.

His death was announced by composer Laurent Petitgirard, permanent secretary of the French Academy of Fine Arts.
Cardin went from the world of bespoke high fashion for private clients to designing ready-to-wear for the masses.

“They said prêt-à-porter would kill your name, but it saved me,” Cardin once said.

The son of a wealthy wine merchant, Cardin was born near Venice on July 2, 1922, and moved with his family from Fascist Italy to France when he was two years old.

Cardin began working as a tailor’s apprentice at the age of fourteen; at twenty-three he moved to Paris, where he studied architecture and worked for the Pacin fashion house and later for Elsa Schiaparelli.

In the French capital, she met filmmaker Jean Cocteau, for whom she designed masks and costumes for the 1946 film “La Belle et La Bete.”

Moved to Christian Dior in 1946 to work as a patterner for feminine “New Look” fashions after World War II. 4 years later, opened his own fashion house and designed costumes for theatrical productions.

In 1953, she launched her first women’s collection, and the following year, she established her first women’s boutique, Eve, where she introduced the Bubble Dress.

Her loose-fitting dresses gathered at the waist and hem and full at the thighs, won her international acclaim. Soon, his fashions were worn by such daring faces as Eva Peron, Rita Hayworth, Elizabeth Taylor, Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau, Mia Farrow, and Jacqueline Kennedy.

In 1957, he visited Japan and became one of the first European designers to explore Asian influences. Later, he became a pioneer in encouraging China to move away from the militaristic dress of Mao Zedong.

In 1957, he opened a men’s boutique, Adam, featuring colorful ties and printed shirts. He later created the iconic collarless suits for the Beatles and helped dress customers such as Gregory Peck. He also helped dress Rex Harrison and Mick Jagger.

“Before me, no designer had ever made clothes for men,” she said. Today, the image of the designer focuses more on men than on women. So, 40 or 50 years ago, I was right,” he said.

In 1959, he shocked the fashion world with a prêt-à-porter show at the Parisian department store Printemps. After this show, he was expelled from the Chambre Syndicale, the elite French haute couture organization.
Fashion at the End of the World

With the advent of the U.S.-Russian space race in the late 1950s and 1960s, he introduced his “Cosmocorps” collection. His space-age looks included helmets, googles, tunics, and thigh-high boots.

“My favorite clothes are the ones I’ve invented for a life that doesn’t exist yet, for the world of tomorrow,” he said.

Or, as he put it in an interview with AFP in 2009:” Fashion and design are not the same thing. Fashion is something that can be worn. Design may be unpleasant and unpopular, but it is creative. So design is where the real value is,” he said.

By the 1970s, he had become a branding pioneer, putting his name on everything from automobiles, the 1971 American Motors Cardan AMX Javelin, to perfumes, pens, cigarettes, and sardines.

In a 2002 article, the New York Times called him a “branding visionary,” noting that some 800 products bearing his name are sold in more than 140 countries, generating $1 billion in annual revenue.

In 1981, he is credited with buying Maxim’s restaurant, one of the most famous restaurants in Paris, for more than $20 million.

Pierre Cardin Fashion Designer

“I’ve done it all! I even have my own water! I even have my own water! I do perfume, and I do sardines. Why not? During the war, it was better to smell sardines than perfume. If someone tells me to do toilet paper, I will do it,” he said in a 2002 interview with The Times.

He liked to use geometric and strange designs. He developed Cardin, a fabric for embossing abstract shapes into clothing. One of his residences was the Palais Bulle (Bubble Palace), a series of strange circular buildings overlooking the Mediterranean Sea near Cannes that looked like a combination of the “Flintstones” and the “Jetsons.

Pierre Cardin Fashion Designer

He also owned and restored the Marquis de Sade’s castle in Provence and hosted concerts and opera performances.” Cardin has perfect eye pitch,” Architectural Digest said in a 2007 article about the restoration of the chateau, originally built in the 15th century.

Despite being gay, Cardin had a five-year relationship with Moreau, “the queen of French New Wave cinema,” according to The Hollywood Reporter, during which time Cardin maintained a relationship with his longtime artistic director and life partner Andre Oliver According to The Hollywood Reporter, Cardin maintained a relationship with his longtime artistic director and life partner, Andre Oliver, during that time. Oliver died in 1993.

Cardin’s fascination with space led him to NASA, where he tried on the Apollo 11 space suit in 1971, two years after the first moon landing. In 2019, 50 years after the first moon landing, the Brooklyn Museum hosted a retrospective of Cardin’s work. In the catalog, he was asked about his vision of fashion half a century later.

“In 2069, we will all be walking on the moon or Mars wearing my ‘Cosmocorps’ ensembles. The women will be wearing Plexiglas cloche hats and tube outfits, and the men will be wearing oval pants. The men will wear oval pants and kinetic tunics.”

Pierre Cardin Fashion Designer Pierre Cardin Fashion Designer Pierre Cardin Fashion Designer Pierre Cardin Fashion Designer Pierre Cardin Fashion Designer Pierre Cardin Fashion Designer