French fashion designer Pierre Cardin dies at 98

French fashion designer Pierre Cardin possessed a wildly inventive artistic sensibility tempered by a heavy dose of business sense. She had no problem admitting that she was earning more from a pair of stockings than from a six-figure couture dress.

Cardin, who died Tuesday at age 98, was the quintessential entrepreneurial designer. He understood the importance of his unique haute couture shows in fueling consumer desire and became one of the pioneers of licensing. His name adorned hundreds of products, from accessories to household items.

“The numbers don’t lie,” Cardin said in a 1970 French television interview. “I earn more from the sale of a tie than from the sale of a million-franc dress. It is contradictory, but the accounts show it. In the end, it’s all about numbers. “

The French Academy of Fine Arts announced Cardin’s death in a tweet. He had been among its illustrious members since 1992. The academy did not give a cause of death or say where the designer died.

The designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, who made his debut at the Cardin maison, paid tribute to his mentor on Twitter: “Thank you, Mr. Cardin, for opening the doors of fashion to me and making my dream possible.”

Along with compatriot Andre Courreges and Spaniard Paco Rabanne, two other Paris-based designers known for their edgy Space Age styles, Cardin revolutionized fashion in the early 1950s.

At a time when other Paris brands were obsessed with flattering the feminine form, Cardin’s designs project the wearer as a sort of glorified hanger, there to show the sharp shapes and graphic patterns of clothing. His designs, which were created neither for pragmatists nor for wallflowers, were all about making a grand entrance, sometimes quite literally.

The fluorescent spandex robes and jumpsuits were fitted with plastic underwire that extended away from the body at the waist, elbows, wrists, and knees. Bubble gowns and capes wrapped wearers in oversized spheres of cloth. The touches were shaped like flying saucers; fisherman’s hats covered the entire heads of the models, with cut-out windshields at the eyes.

“Fashion is always ridiculous, seen from before or after. But at the moment, it’s wonderful,” Cardin said in the 1970 interview.

A quote on his brand’s website summed up his philosophy: “The clothes I prefer are what I create for a life that doesn’t exist yet, the world of tomorrow.”

Cardin’s name engraved thousands of products, from wristwatches to sheets. At the brand’s heyday, products bearing his elegant italic signature were sold in some 100,000 outlets around the world.

That number dropped dramatically in recent years as Cardin’s products were seen as getting cheaper and her clothing designs, which, decades later, remained virtually unchanged from 1960s-era styles, felt outdated.

A smart businessman, Cardin used his fabulous wealth to acquire top-tier properties in Paris, including Maxim’s de la belle epoque restaurant, which he also frequented. Its flagship store, located next to the Presidential Elysee Palace in Paris, continues to display eye-catching designs.

Cardin was born on July 7, 1922, in a small town near Venice, Italy, into a modest working-class family. As a child, the family moved to Saint Etienne, in central France, where Cardin was educated and became a tailor’s apprentice at age 14.

Later, Cardin adopted the status of a man who had made himself, saying in the 1970 television interview that doing it alone “makes you see life in a much more real way and forces you to make decisions and be brave.

“It is much more difficult to enter a dark forest alone than when you already know the way,” he said.

After moving to Paris, he worked as an assistant at the Casa de Paquin starting in 1945 and also helped design costumes for artists such as filmmaker Jean Cocteau. He was involved in creating the costumes for the director’s 1946 hit, Beauty and the Beast.

After working briefly with Elsa Schiaparelli and Christian Dior, Cardin opened her own fashion house in the posh 1st arrondissement of Paris, starting with costumes and masks.

Cardin delivered her first real collection in 1953. Success followed quickly, with the 1954 launch of the celebrated “bubble” dress, which put the label on the map.

Cardin staged his first ready-to-wear show in 1959 at the Printemps department store in Paris, a bold move that temporarily expelled him from the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture. Cardin’s relationship with the organization, the governing body for French fashion, was shaky, and she later left of her own free will to organize shows on her own terms.

Cardin’s high-profile relationship with French actress Jeanne Moreau, the smoky-voiced blonde of “Jules and Jim” fame, also helped boost the brand’s profile. Described by both as a “true love”, the couple’s relationship lasted for about five years, although they never married.

For Cardin, the astronomical expense of producing haute couture collections was an investment. Although pharaonic clothing prices did not cover the cost of making the tailor-made garments, the media coverage generated by the haute couture shows helped sell affordable items, such as hats, belts and underwear.

As Cardin’s fame and fortune increased, so did his real estate portfolio. He long lived an austere, almost monastic existence with his sister in a spacious apartment directly across from the Elysee Palace and bought so many upscale real estate in the neighborhood that fashion insiders joked that he might have struck a coup. .

In addition to his men’s and women’s clothing boutiques, Cardin opened a children’s store, a furniture store, and the Espace Cardin, a sprawling salon in central Paris where the designer would later host fashion shows as well as plays. , ballet performances and other cultural events. .

Beyond clothing, Cardin put his stamp on perfumes, makeup, porcelain, chocolates, a resort in the south of France, and even Maxim’s velvet-walled watering hole, where he could often be seen at the lunch.

The 1970s saw a major expansion for Cardin that brought its outlets to over 100,000, with roughly the same number of workers producing under the Cardin label worldwide.

Cardin was at the forefront in recognizing the importance of Asia, both as a manufacturing center and for its consumer potential. He was present in Japan in the early 1960s and in 1979 he became the first Western designer to organize a fashion show in China.

In 1986, he signed an agreement with the Soviet authorities to open a showroom in the communist nation to sell locally made clothing under his brand.

In his later life, with no apparent heir, Cardin dismantled much of his vast empire, selling dozens of his Chinese licenses to two local companies in 2009.

Two years later, he told the Wall Street Journal that he would be willing to sell his entire company, at the time including some 500-600 licenses, for $ 1.4 billion.

– AP