Designer Pierre Cardin dies

Paris. – Designer Pierre Cardin, a pioneer of prêt-à-porter born in Italy but living in Paris since 1945, died on Tuesday at the age of 98, according to his family in the French media.

The stylist died at the American hospital in Neuilly, on the outskirts of the French capital.

Cardin, a businessman who created an emporium with his name, participated with André Courrèges and Paco Rabanne in the renewal of French haute couture in the post-war period and chained futuristic creations throughout his career.

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 began fashion at the age of 14, in the French town of Saint Étienne, as an assistant to a tailor.

In 1944, he began working at the then famous Paquin firm in Paris, where he drew the costumes and masks for Jean Cocteau’s film “Beauty and the Beast”.

In the capital he passed by some of the most respected fashion firms in the first half of the twentieth century, such as Schiaparelli, the quintessential surrealist woman, and Christian Dior, who had just opened his shop at the time.

Along with Dior, Cardin always boasted of having participated in the creation of the jacket dress that would become the emblem of the firm and that gave shape to the famous “New Look”, fitted at the waist and voluminous to the skirt.

In 1950, after this experience, he created his own brand which he named after his name and which was crucial in the revolution that the industry experienced in the second half of the twentieth century, when tailor-made clothing gave instead of chain productions, the so-called ready-to-wear, much more accessible than haute couture.

Cardin has maintained until the end of his days his business character and his love of fashion, in a style that although many now call it a past, represented for the designer and his followers timeless creations.

He himself questioned in an interview the “danger” that fashion produces non-stop and defended his style. “I have a recognizable style, that’s my signature. The same can’t be said of other designers,” he said.