Difficult to stick a label on it.
But everyone knows his name.
He didn't do anything like the others.
Great differences, permanently.
One foot in its time, and the other in the future.
A workshop in Paris and shops all over the world.
Hundreds of everyday objects marked with his famous signature and haute couture dresses.
Stylist, designer, businessmen, passionate about old stones and contemporary creation, Pierre Cardin was all that at the same time.
At 98 years old, this fashion monument has stopped racing the planet and has definitely put down his scissors.
He died on Tuesday at the American hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine).
"He is a visionary, who has deeply marked the history of fashion, just like Yves Saint Laurent or Courrèges," underlines Alexandre Samson, curator of the Palais Galliera, the Parisian fashion museum.
He is an atypical, a free electron.
"
Couturier, designer, ambassador of France, academician, patron, throughout his life, Pierre Cardin has carried out a fine work.
Thank you, Monsieur Cardin, for opening the doors to fashion and for making my dream possible ... #PierreCardin pic.twitter.com/GeworJSsuA
- Jean Paul Gaultier (@JPGaultier) December 29, 2020
Pietro Costante Cardin, the last of ten children, was born on the other side of the Alps, near Venice, on July 2, 1922. His poor family left Italy shortly after to settle in Saint-Etienne .
This is where he started at 14 as a tailor.
Then he goes up to Paris and is quickly noticed.
He participated in the creation of costumes for "Beauty and the Beast", by Jean Cocteau, in 1946. Launched as the first tailor of Christian Dior, it was he who imagined the iconic "Bar", a two-piece suit in black and white at the very marked waist, in 1947.
The triumph of color
1960s. The woman frees herself, the silhouettes change.
No more wasp sizes.
Pierre Cardin, who created his fashion house ten years earlier, feels it before anyone else.
The skirts shorten, the fabrics move away from the body and become comfortable.
Man sets out to conquer space.
Cardin imagines the future, and inscribes the stars, the planets on his clothes.
In an explosion of colors.
“He had an obsession with the sphere, the round, with a very geometric approach to clothing,” analyzes the specialist.
Insatiable researcher, he invents, experiments, innovates.
In matters too.
No one, before him, had made the shape evolve so much, not hesitating to bulge, pleat, round, sculpt.
Bubble dresses, jackets with pagoda shoulders and Mao collar costumes open the eyes of purists.
Vinyl, neoprene, plexi are coming to his locker rooms.
Women and men alike.
George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and John Lennon in 1963, wearing Pierre Cardin jackets.
V&A Images / Harry Hammond
“He even created his fabric, the cardine, a molded woolen fabric,” explains Alexandre Samson, whose museum has around a hundred designs by the designer.
The Beatles are seduced.
In 1963, the couturier created a taupe-colored jacket for them, without a collar.
Cardin also dresses the heroes in “Bowler hat and leather boots”.
He shared the life of Jeanne Moreau for four years.
The couturier breaks codes and borders.
Between haute couture and ready-to-wear, already, not hesitating to organize a parade at the Printemps department store in 1959 and set up a “corner” there.
The great traditional couturiers are pinching their noses.
Like a pioneer in China
Nothing stops him, piqued by an insatiable curiosity.
In 1957, he traveled to Japan.
In 1978, headed for China.
Where no other French businessman has yet ventured.
“He anticipated the development of this market and understood before anyone else that this was not a culture to be despised,” continues Alexandre Samson.
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"I always feel satisfied with my present, but I never feel like I have arrived", confided the artist, quoted in the beautiful documentary released last September "Pierre Cardin, un homme, un nom, un myth", available on DVD .
Pierre Cardin in 1958. The 36-year-old couturier would become the star of the Sixties.
Ullstein bild
Used to media stunts, he does not hesitate, for the 40 years of his presence in China, in 2018, to afford the Great Wall for the parade of his collection.
In 1991, it was already Moscow's Red Square.
For about thirty years, his style has sometimes been mocked.
"It has become less interesting, because it is repeating itself, there is no longer any renewal," notes the curator.
In the stilted microcosm of Parisian haute couture, it is often taken from above.
While looking with disbelief at the empire of this outstanding businessman, a mountain estimated at 600 million euros, amassed thanks to countless licenses, pens, pockets or umbrellas.
"He was a builder, with an inordinate ambition and an incredible strength in him", says Jean-Pascal Hesse, director of the brand's communication for twenty-six years and one of the closest collaborators of Cardin, first couturier. appointed to the Academy of Fine Arts.
The trend, an outdated concept
He also had the folly of grandeur when he bought the Maxim's restaurant, which he built the Palais Bulle, an extraordinary residence facing the bay of Cannes, or when he remodeled the castle of the Marquis de Sade and the village de Lacoste, in the Luberon, not without attracting the wrath of certain inhabitants.
"He is one of the last greats of haute couture," reacts designer Chantal Thomass.
He believed in everything and was so sure of himself.
What terrifies me is the trend.
He never followed her, he created his own style, things that did not exist.
"