Designer Pierre Cardin dies

Paris. The designer Pierre Cardin, a pioneer of ready-to-wear born in Italy but living in Paris since 1945, died this Tuesday at the age of 98, as his family announced to the French media.

The stylist died in the American hospital in Neuilly, on the outskirts of the French capital.

Cardin, a businessman who founded an emporium with his name, participated with André Courrèges and Paco Rabanne in the renewal of French haute couture in the post-war period, linking futuristic creations throughout his career.

Born in 1922 in the small town of Sant’Andrea di Barbarana, near Venice, to a farming family who emigrated to France fleeing fascism, he started fashion at the age of 14 in the French city of Saint-Étienne, as an assistant from a tailor.

In 1944 he started working for the then famous firm of Paquin, in Paris, where he drew costumes and masks for Jean Cocteau’s film “Beauty and the Beast”.

In the capital, she passed some of the most respected fashion companies of the first half of the 20th century, such as Schiaparelli, a typical friend of the Surrealists, and Christian Dior, who had just opened her shop at the time.

Together with Dior, Cardin boasted of having always collaborated in the creation of the jacket that would become the emblem of the brand, giving shape to the famous “New Look”, fitted and voluminous at the skirts.

In 1950 after that experience he created his own brand which he baptized with his name and which was crucial in the revolution that the industry went through in the second half of the 20th century, when tailor-made clothing gave rise to chain productions, the so-called ready-to-wear, much more accessible than haute couture.

Cardin retained his entrepreneurial spirit and love for fashion to the end of his days, in a style that, while many now call it the past, represented timeless creations for the designer and his followers.

In an interview he questioned the “danger” of non-stop fashion production and defended his style. “I have a recognizable style, that’s my signature. The same cannot be said for other ”designers, he said.