By Simdi Gloria:-
The French designer Pierre Cardin has died at the age of 98. He upended fashion in the 60s and 70s with his futuristic looks and pioneering approach to merchandise.
France’s Fine Arts Academy on Twitter announced his death.
His family told Agence France-Presse he died in hospital in Neuilly, near Paris.
In the late 1950s, Cardin was well-known for his bold, space-age designs.
Cardin was Well-regarded by the Parisian haute couture set.
He dressed the 60s luminaries such as Elizabeth Taylor, Brigitte Bardot, and the Beatles, whose radical, collarless jackets – inspired by Cardin and worn on The Ed Sullivan Show – became the new standard for a generation still wearing their father’s suits.
Cardin had a career that lasted more than three-quarters of a century.
He was a household name whose name got affixed on to everyday items such as pens, clocks, trousers and shoes, and later hotels, perfumes, and restaurants.
He brought the inaccessible world of high fashion to the masses and with it, a steady stream of revenue that earned him the unofficial title “the Napoleon of licencers.”
“They said pret-a-porter [ready to wear clothes] will kill your name, and it saved me,” he once said. He sold Pierre Cardin-brand goods in more than 140 countries on five continents.
Cardin was born in Italy in 1922 near Treviso and was the youngest of 11 children. His family fled and moved to France when he was a child during Mussolini’s regime. It was thought that Cardin would become an architect as he grew up in the French industrial town of Saint Étienne but his interest lay in fashion.
“Italian by birth, Pierre Cardin never forgot his origins while bringing unconditional love to France,” his family said. It’s thought he learned to be a tailor aged 17 workings alongside the Red Cross.
Moving to Paris and in 1947, he worked on the set of the film Beauty and the Beast with the poet, artist, and director Jean Cocteau who introduced him to Christian Dior, and by 1950 he had established his own label.
In 1979, Cardin became the first French designer to trade with China, and in 1983, he became the first to trade in the Soviet Union. He was also the first designer to hold a fashion show in Red Square, Moscow, drawing a crowd of 200,000 in 1991.
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