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“Can’t we do it differently?”,
This would probably be Pierre Cardin’s mission statement if it were formulated as a question. In this question, which the designer very often asked in principle, lies his revolutionary spirit. Pierre Cardin came, saw and turned everything upside down – not only the fashion of the time, but the whole industry and ultimately societies all over the globe.
Long before his world tour as a renowned designer that would shake hands with the Pope alongside heads of state such as Gorbachev or Fidel Castro, Pierre Cardin’s first journey was from Italy to France. Born in 1922 as Pietro Costante Cardin in the Venetian village of San Biagio di Callalta, he was one of nine children in a poor winegrowing family. At a very young age, Pietro’s older siblings had to take on the physical burdens of rural life under the Italian sun. Pietro would have also faced this fate if Mussolini’s regime had not come to power. In 1924, the family fled from fascism to France, where bambino Pietro became le petit Pierre.
Not much private information is known about the exceptional designer, who liked to remain secretive. That is why there is no Pierre Cardin biography. According to his own statement, his path was predetermined; even as a child he sewed clothes for dolls. At the age of 14, when asked at school about what he wanted to do for a living, he replied with “fashion designer”, without really knowing what that would mean. Two years later, he left his family to follow his path, which led him to Paris. During the Second World War, he worked for the French Red Cross, where he learned to tailor. After confirming his talent here, he quickly found a new employer at the PAQUIN fashion house, where the young talent designed costumes for the play the Beauty and the Beast.
With no schooling, but full of verve and drive, Pierre Cardin managed to get a job at Christian Dior, with whom he worked closely on the “New Look” project in 1947. The new look stood for rounded shoulders, a tightened waist and a very compressed skirt. Cardin was later to turn this fashion on its head too and soon parted ways with Dior as part of his own journey to freedom. Cardin always loved freedom and no longer wanted to be restricted in his development. Moreover, he felt called to higher things and could already hear himself playing the first violin. It wasn’t long before he published his own first collection in 1954 and caused a sensation four years later with the Bubble Dress.
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Visionnaire polyvalent et designer démocratique
Cardin held back no innovation in the next decade either. Despite great protest, he brought Parisian haute couture to the streets and henceforth created fashion for every woman. What had previously been the preserve of high society was now to be accessible to a much wider class. “What’s the point of designing something that nobody wears off the catwalk?” asked Cardin, democratising the fashion industry. The elite houses of haute couture then distanced themselves from the supposed rebel. From then on, his fashion shows were no longer allowed to take place at the same time as those of the houses that were officially authorised to call themselves “haute couture” by the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, the Parisian fashion association. Cardin was suddenly regarded as the fashion industry’s first socialist, who felt that all of Paris was against him. His old friend Yves Saint Laurent became a new enemy.
“I never followed fashion. I made it.”
If you look at Pierre Cardin’s career from a distance, it turns out to be much more of an evolution. For it was genuine modernisation, not temporary upheavals, that the fashion designer aimed for. What he changed remained and developed further. Thus, many milestones of fashion were created along his path, all of which left a lasting effect. It was Cardin, for example, who was the first designer to create a men’s collection, thereby causing another scandal. While the suits of the fashion industry of the time shook their heads and the scene largely turned its back on him, he hired students who agreed to present his designs. Even Cardin himself unceremoniously turned himself into a model and, as a great lover of theatre, enjoyed slipping into a new role. When you are on your own, you have to have the courage to make decisions.
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But Cardin gained international influence primarily through diversification in his choice of models. Before him, no designer had ever flown to Japan to find models. In general, no one dared to do fashion in Asia before. China had just come out of the Cultural Revolution and in the Soviet Union people only wore uniforms. With the cuts and lines in his fashion, he opened up a whole new world as an ambassador of fashion in these homogeneous societies. The pictures of his fashion show on the Great Wall of China went around the world.
Apart from the fact that Cardin also had his collections presented by Asian and black models, the feminist designer also countered the sexualisation of women through fashion. He liberated female bodies by doing away with stiff shoulders and tight waists that wearers always had to squeeze into. His loose and comparatively wide silhouettes no longer emphasised the female figure and thus offered not only freedom of movement but also freedom from a gender perspective. This freedom increased the self-confidence of many women and would probably get the hashtag #empowerment nowadays.
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Future Fashion and Furniture
Cardin’s pupil, Jean Paul Gaultier, once said of his first employer: “Thanks to Pierre Cardin, I know that anything is possible.” Cardin seemed to have been aware of this for a long time, because between cars and aeroplanes, there seemed to be nothing that the visionary had not already designed. At the very least, he put his signature on many valuable and precious products and thus ensured that his name remained unknown to no one. It is almost no longer surprising that, when asked to name the French president during a test, students would write “Pierre Cardin” in the answer box.
In the 1970s and 80s, the eyewear industry was not spared Cardin’s avant-garde touch. In reality, it was badly needed. Because before Cardin, only black and gold frames were seen, the most adventurous being the combination of both colours. It was the futuristic Pierre Cardin sunglasses and Pierre Cardin glasses that brought new momentum into the world of eyewear. What shapes and colours were currently on trend in the eyewear realm only peripherally affected the designer. For his designs floated above things in completely different spheres. It is no coincidence that today’s popular models with the PC logo are called Evolution 5 or Evolution 6.
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Pierre Cardin’s furniture is also out of this world. This area of his work was not monetarily important to Cardin because he considered his creations to be collector’s items rather than having an everyday use. Designing Pierre Cardin home collections served as another way for him to express himself – and it meant the world to him. He enjoyed every exhibition of his furniture and Cardin refers to his induction into the Académie des Beaux-Arts (in the fauteuil category) as his greatest honour.
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Perfume, towels and all kinds of household goods followed. Cardin even had his own theatre, where he gave unknown directors and actors the chance to make it big. The world-famous restaurant Maxim’s only became a chain after Cardin became involved. One of the last ideas of the old but indefatigable great thinker of design was to build a tower in Venice, but he was not able to complete it. Pierre Cardin was determined to live to be 100; in the end, he was just two years short of it. He passed away a week ago in Neuilly-sur-Seine at the age of 98.
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