Remembering Pierre Cardin, the pioneering fashion designer who started at Dior, dressed The Beatles and staged a fashion show in China just two years after the Cultural Revolution ended
Cardin was a savvy businessman who brought ready-to-wear to the masses, made Asia his muse, and was so obsessed with the Space Age, he tried on Buzz Aldrin’s original spacesuit on a visit to Nasa
The legendary Italy-born designer Pierre Cardin, who influenced fashion in the 1960s and 70s, has died at the age of 98.
As a designer he was at the forefront of innovation, beginning with his years as head of the atelier at Christian Dior from 1946 to 1950 where he worked on the “New Look”. As a tailor he was adept at maths, geometry and construction.
At one time his name was even in the frame to succeed Dior when he died in 1957, but Cardin had already established his own couture house in 1950 when he was 28, ultimately producing clothes that were the antithesis of the New Look by disregarding the female form beneath.
Although better known for his Space Age fashion, Cardin also stirred a revolution in menswear, challenging the post-war looks coming from London’s Savile Row by creating completely new silhouettes. His first menswear show in 1960 presented a new slender cylindrical style modelled by 250 students from the Sorbonne university.
His high buttoned collarless jackets worn by the Beatles were de rigueur for fashionable men in the 1960s. Worn with polo necks, they looked relaxed yet elegant. Functionality and comfort became key ingredients, and asymmetrically zipped coats, jackets and jumpsuits appeared on the catwalk – a prelude to a utilitarian look that endures in menswear today.
In a pioneering career lasting more than 70 years, this was one of the many milestones that he achieved, and how extraordinary that experience must have seemed for those guests gathered at that Beijing show. Watching Cardin’s models parading batwing jumpsuits, jackets with sharp amplified shoulders and glamorous Lurex evening ensembles must have felt so alien at that time.
Cardin was a bit of a revolutionary himself: a disrupter of the fashion system, an icon of the avant-garde, a restless ambassador of design taking his shows to Russia, China and India. He was also the first to pioneer the modern-day concept of a fashion brand. He once said, “I wanted my name to become a brand and not just a label.” He certainly achieved that with the Pierre Cardin name emblazoned across everything from shirt ties to furniture (furniture design was another of his accomplishments) and aircraft interiors.