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, his family announced to the French media.
The stylist died in the American hospital in Neuilly, on the outskirts of the French capital.
Cardin, businessman who is crhe created an emporium with his name, participated with André Courrèges and Paco Rabanne in the renewal of French haute couture in the post-war period and throughout his career he has chained futuristic creations.
Born in 1922 in the small town of Sant’Andrea di Barbarana, near Venice, to a farming family who immigrated to France fleeing fascism, He started in fashion at the age of 14, in Saint-Étienne, France, as a tailor’s assistant.
In 1944 he started working at the then famous firm of Paquin, in Paris where 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 suit that would become the brand’s emblem, shaping the famous “New Look”., fitted and voluminous in the skirts.
In 1950, after that experience, created his own brand which he baptized with his name which was pivotal in the revolution that the industry experienced in the second half of the 20th century, when tailor-made clothing gave way 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 of others” designers, it said.