Pierre Cardin

Pierre Cardin (born Pietro Costante Cardin; 2 July 1922 – 29 December 2020) was an Italian-born naturalised-French fashion designer. He is known for what were his avant-garde style and Space Age designs. He preferred geometric shapes and motifs, often ignoring the female form. He advanced into unisex fashions, sometimes experimental, and not always practical. He founded his fashion house in 1950 and introduced the "bubble dress" in 1954.

Though he is remembered today mostly for his Space Age late '60s womenswear, during the 1960s and first half of the '70s he was better known as the top menswear designer of the time, the man who had reintroduced shaped, fitted suits to the public after a long period of looser fit in men's clothes. Retailers noted that Cardin's popularity had taught men to associate a designer's name with their clothing the way women had long done. Cardin was often said to have been the main non-British leader of the Peacock Revolution that had begun in the UK. His menswear collection from the year 1960 was so influential that the Beatles' tailor Dougie Millings copied its collarless suits for the group in 1963.

Cardin was designated a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in 1991, and a United Nations FAO Goodwill Ambassador in 2009.

Career

Cardin was born on 2 July 1922 near Treviso in northern Italy, the son of Maria Montagner and Alessandro Cardin. His parents were wealthy wine merchants, but lost their fortune in World War I. To escape the blackshirts they left Italy and settled in Saint-Étienne, France in 1924 along with his ten siblings. His father wanted him to study architecture, but from childhood he was interested in dressmaking and at age fourteen apprenticed with Saint-Étienne tailor Louis Bompuis.