Designer Pierre Cardin, a clothing pioneer born in Italy but living in Paris since 1945, died on Tuesday at the age of 98, his family told the French press.
The stylist died in the American hospital in Neuilly, on the outskirts of the French capital.
Cardin, a businessman who crhe created an emporium with his name, participated with André Courrèges and Paco Rabanne at 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, into a family of farmers who emigrated to France fleeing fascism, He started fashion at the age of 14, in the French city of Saint-Étienne, as an assistant tailor.
In 1944, he started working at the then famous company Paquin, in Paris, where he drew costumes and masks for Jean Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast.”
In the capital, he went through some of the most respected fashion companies of the first half of the twentieth century, such as Schiaparelli, a quintessential friend of the surrealists, and Christian Dior, who had just opened his store at that time.
Together with Dior, Cardin has always boasted that he participated in the creation of the jacket suit that will become the brand’s emblem and that gave shape to the famous “New Look”., fitted at the waist and voluminous in skirts.
In 1950, after that experience, he created his own brand which he named after him and which was crucial in the revolution that the industry experienced in the second half of the twentieth century, when custom clothing gave way to chain production, the so-called ready to wear, much more affordable than haute couture.
Cardin has maintained until the end of his days his entrepreneurial character and love of fashion, in a style that, although many call it the past, represented timeless creations for the designer and his followers.
In an interview, he himself questioned the “danger” of fashion non-stop production and defended his style. “I have a recognized style, this is my signature. The same cannot be said of others.” designers, it was said.