![]() ![]() ![]() A year later, however, he was showing his first ready-to-wear menswear, a cutting edge collection that included those Nehru-style collarless jackets (an adaptation of the type worn by the Indian prime minister) sold at his Adam boutique, which would go on to inspire the likes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.Ĭardin’s interest in futurism and the Apollo space programme led him to put models in knitted catsuits and space helmets, as well as men and women in avant garde tunics (also setting a precedent for unisex fashion).Ĭardin on the red carpet in Cannes, southern France, in 1979. He went on to open his own boutique, Eve, on Rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré and create his 1954 bubble dress – tight at the waist, loose at the thigh and narrow at the hem, and famously worn by Eva Perón.īy 1959, in a career first for a French designer, he was showing ready-to-wear for women at the department store Printemps, shocking Paris’s fashion establishment, which had thus far managed to keep the everyday consumer away from couture.Īccording to the BBC, he was expelled from the rarified guild of French fashion designers. Cocteau introduced him to Christian Dior, and by 1950 he had established his own label. Moving to Paris, he worked on the set of the film Beauty and the Beast with the poet, artist and director Jean Cocteau in 1947. Photograph: Frederic Souloy/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Pierre Cardin and models in his Bubble Palace in Theoule sur mer, France, in October 2008. It’s thought he learned to be a tailor aged 17 working alongside the Red Cross. “Italian by birth, Pierre Cardin never forgot his origins while bringing unconditional love to France,” his family said. Growing up in the French industrial town of Saint Étienne, it was hoped that Cardin would become an architect but his interest lay in fashion. His family fled Mussolini’s regime and moved to France when he was a child. ![]() Pietro Cardin was born near Treviso in Italy in 1922, the youngest of 11 children. He sold Pierre Cardin-brand goods in more than 140 countries on five continents. “They said pret-a-porter will kill your name, and it saved me,” he once said. Licensing and affixing his name – and often just initials – on to everyday items such as pens, clocks, trousers and shoes, and later hotels, perfumes and restaurants, he became a branding pioneer, bringing the inaccessible world of high fashion to the masses and with it, a steady stream of revenue that earned him the unofficial title “the Napoleon of licencers.” Photograph: Three Lions/Getty Imagesīut in a career that lasted more than three-quarters of a century, it was Cardin’s canny business sense that elevated him to household name. Take a look at some of his best moments below.Elizabeth Taylor in a headdress of silver spikes, orchids and lilies chats to designer Cardin, who is wearing what looks like an aluminium gas mask. In 2019, the Brooklyn Museum recognized Cardin’s fashion innovation with a retrospective called Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion, and in 2020, a documentary called House of Cardin was released. Throughout his tenure, countless celebrities have worn his designs, including Jackie Kennedy, Jeanne Moreau, the Beatles, and Naomi Campbell. Cardin set the stage for modern branding in the following decades by signing his name on everything from accessories and fragrances to home goods. In the ’60s, he shaped the mod aesthetic with space-age fashion - futuristic collections influenced by geometric shapes and crafted in fabrics like plastics and brightly colored vinyl. In 1954, his “bubble dresses,” known for their bubble-like skirt, became a worldwide commercial success, and five years later, he presented his first ready-to-wear collection at the Printemps department store in Paris - a bold move that got him temporarily expelled from Chambre Syndicale, the body governing French haute couture. He founded his own eponymous label in 1950, and the rest is history. Cardin cut his teeth as a tailor and worked under Christian Dior during the New Look era. Born in 1922 outside of Venice, he relocated to France with his family to find refuge from the rise of Italian fascism. On Tuesday, the fashion industry mourned the news of the French designer’s death at the age of 98.Ĭardin had a long and decorated career spanning more than eight decades. “What I am now never existed before,” he told Vogue in 1982. His decisions changed fashion forever, whether he was making his haute couture collections accessible by introducing ready-to-wear, breaking design tradition with space-age unisex looks, or creating a global business blueprint that brands follow to this day. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |