Pierre Cardin is a visionary designer and industry leader who broke the rules of haute couture. He made fashion accessible to all. He is also an exceptional designer with a taste for challenge.
Cardin's background
Born in Italy in 1922 into a poor family of nine, he moved to Paris in late 1945, where his destiny awaited him. There he began working at Paqin, where he met Christine Blade and Jean Cocteau, making masks and costumes for the Beauty and the Beast script. After a brief period at Schiaparelli, he moved to Christian Dior, where he stayed for only three years, later creating his own fashion house. In 1953, he created his first collection. A few years later, he triumphed with a new collection in an unusual style with an explosion of colours and avant-garde shapes.
An outstanding designer
Pierre Cardin's wardrobes are expressed with avant-garde materials, geometric cuts and spherical volumes. The history of fashion will remember above all his bubble dress, his pagoda shoulder jacket, his Mao collar suit or his "Cosmocorps" clothes, which are super tight unisex science fiction suits. In 1958, he was also the first to do a men's fashion show when the male modelling profession was not yet born. Later, he once again organised a fashion show with blockbuster aspects. Two shows will be remembered: a show in the middle of the Gobi desert in 2007 and a show in front of 200,000 people on Red Square in Moscow.
Some of Cardin's famous creations
It was the famous red pleated wool coat Soleil for women that made the fashion designer famous in the United States. Presented in New York, Cardin innovated in the treatment of fabrics. In fact, before this, pleating technology was reserved for light fabrics for dresses. So he decided to apply it to heavy coat fabrics, which were really successful. In 1954, he used his favourite geometric shape to design the bubble dress. This concept was a hit and became very well known all over the world. After Pierre Cardin shook up the norms of women's fashion, he tackled men's fashion. He launched his "cylinder" collection for men in 1960. It is so called because the jacket has no collar. It is one of Cardin's most famous designs and has remained timeless.