[civsoc-mw] Pierre Cardin, fashion designer, 1922-2020

[Tony Thontholani]

Pierre Cardin, fashion’s Great Democrat who died at the age of 98 in Paris on Tuesday, believed everyone deserved a bit of style no matter where they lived, and no matter if it was only on the cover of a sardine tin.
During his 70-year career, Cardin became one of the most celebrated and at the same time reviled figures in the fashion world. He was justly applauded for his creative vision. His ex-assistant Jean Paul Gaultier told Laurence Benaïm, founder of Stiletto magazine, “with him, I learned you could make a hat from a chair”.

One of the pioneers of space-age fashion, Cardin was also condemned for his unabashed embrace of licensing, and his willingness to put his name on everything from ties to toilet paper. Indeed, as fashion consolidated and industrialised in the 1990s, “Cardin” became shorthand for the way in which a brand could be devalued by overexposure.

Not that the designer cared. “I don’t have anything to prove,” he told trade publication Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) in 2008.

Indeed, from the beginning he made a practice out of thumbing his nose at conventional wisdom.

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FT
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