Although he claimed to eat very little, Pierre Cardin loved the bread with tomato and Iberian ham ("it's very good") that he was served before giving a master class to students from fashion schools in Plaça del Rei. It was the only whim that the great French master asked the organization of the 080 Barcelona Fashion Week, those responsible for bringing him to the city that January 2012, who would count on him again five years later to present a theatrical piece that he produced and dressed.
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In February 2017, Cardin ---who did not try the ham, but during dinner drank a lot of white wine like a good "son of the Italian vineyards"---showed himself just as lucid and vitalistic as the previous time. Very white hair, a fragile-looking body, and strength in his gaze. He was already 94 years old and felt comfortable in his skin: "I am what I am; it doesn't scare me. I have found happiness in the balance of my life and my age," the pioneer of prêt-à-porter, fashion licenses, and unisex style, who has just died at 98 in Paris, told a group of journalists. He has left in the city where he created his empire, where he founded his first fashion house 70 years ago, and he has done so without retiring.
Stockings for men and women
"Academic, couturier, man of theater, of restoration. I have spent my life working and will continue to do so until death," said this fashion giant born in San Biagio di Callalta (Veneto) as Pietro Cardini into a large family of farmers, who took refuge in France in 1924 fleeing fascism. Cardin, a self-made man, was never ashamed of having grown up in suburbs. Perhaps in the essence of that street boy was the creative germ of that avant-garde clothing that broke clichés in the sixties.
"I wanted to give women the opportunity to wear dresses that were for working, sitting, getting in the car and driving," he said in 2010 in Paris when he presented a compilation of his work Pierre Cardin Sixty Years of Innovation, which two years later he would also show to the Barcelona public at the 080 catwalk. His square-shaped designs that freed the body with cutouts, hoops and satellite sleeves, along with caps, miniskirts and colored stockings joined those of Courrèges and Paco Rabanne to express a new youth culture linked to the space age. His Cosmos collection, with stockings for men and women, opened the doors to unisex style in 1964.
"This dress is neither for daily wear nor for dancing, what is it for?"
"In fashion, one must seek simplicity, which is the most difficult thing to achieve," he told fashion students in that 2012 masterclass, while dissecting his creations with words, without holding back in the slightest: "This dress is neither for daily wear nor for dancing, what is it for? This other one has many useless layers," he told them one by one. "Criticism is the only thing that helps you move forward." Curiously, he was also criticized by those who did not understand that a new ready-to-wear era had arrived, but he paid them no mind. Cardin, who admired Balenciaga, never felt comfortable in the haute couture environment of the fifties. Trained in the workshops of Paquin, Schiaparelli and Christian Dior, he scandalized the fashion world by presenting a prêt-à-porter line in 1959 and was expelled from the strict Chambre Syndicale de la Alta Costura.
"When I started, people said I was crazy and no one wanted to wear my clothes," he commented, aware that his iconic style continues to be reinterpreted today. Even his own firm continued to draw from his sources in that year 2012 when, in addition to teaching us, he showed us his latest designs in the Saló del Tinell, with futuristic galactic circular hoops and colorful miniskirts. He based himself on the future, "always unpredictable."
"I had to make my brand commercial"
"None of you had been born when I already clearly saw that I had to make my brand commercial," this genius with great entrepreneurial vision, who was a pioneer in taking his designs to post-war desolate Japan, and in the 70s to a China still to be developed, explained to us in the Santa Ágata chapel in 2012. He will also go down in history as the king of licenses. Perfumes, dinnerware, belts, alarm clocks, furniture, sheets… Up to 800 products.
He said his brand was worth 1 billion euros and that he should take advantage of his name, although the great expansion made his interest wane. He started with ties, ("the day the French minister took it off, production drastically reduced," he said in 2012), and went on to build an empire that also included products derived from the iconic Parisian restaurant Maxim's, which he bought in 1981. All the stars passed through there, from Audrey Hepburn to Marlene Dietrich, whom he described as "an unpleasant person who treated people with contempt" in a conference he gave at the Universitat de Barcelona before a professorship was established in his name during his 2012 visit. The professorship, from the Escola Superior de Cinema i Audiovisuals de Catalunya, aimed to bring relevant cultural figures closer to students. Always well-connected, he also commented that Renata Tebaldi had a more beautiful voice than Maria Callas "but was not as slender."
Dressing cinema and producing theater
In that event, Cardin's figure as a cultural promoter was highlighted, as he claimed to be happy creating shows at l'Espace Pierre Cardin in Paris (5,000 square meters in Place de la Concorde) and at Lacoste Vaucluse castle, the former property of the Marquis de Sade in Provence. It was later, during his 2017 visit to the 080 fashion show, that a play produced and dressed by the creator was seen only once at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya: Dorian Gay: beauty has no mercy.
The fashion designer explained that, although he had been linked to the stage for 55 years, without the economic support of fashion he would never have been able to do theater. He recalled the times when he made film costumes. Those for La belle et la bête (1946) for Jean Cocteau and in 1968 in Histoire immortelle, by Orson Welles, he dressed Jeanne Moreau, the woman he loved and with whom he might have been able to become a father if "the ridiculous pride" of thinking they could be Mr. Moreau or Mrs. Cardin had not prevented it.
He had no children, but he fully trusted his nephew and right-hand man, the pianist and architect Rodrigo Basilicati, who acted as screenwriter and artistic director of the musical work and accompanied him at all times during his stay in Barcelona. Together with him, he also conceived the Palace of Light, a 255-meter-high glass skyscraper, shaped like a Cardin dress, which was intended to be a true sustainable city in a degraded area of Venice. He spoke to us about this building with enthusiasm in 2012, but a few years later, the project, criticized for its difficult visual fit in a heritage city, was dismissed.
Missing Jackie Kennedy
In 2017, Cardin, who stayed at the Hotel Omm as on the previous occasion, confessed that he would have liked to be an actor and praised the 080 catwalk ("a place full of hope") and the clothes of the creators in the face of the increase in copies and counterfeits at a time he considered to be one of "disorder and confusion," in which "poor style fashion, with tears in the knees" triumphed. The designer showed himself to be far from that grunge aesthetic and lamented the increase in unemployment in the fashion sector.
"The rich cause the problems and it is the poor who lose," said this man who headed an empire of licenses and missed icons of the past like Jackie Kennedy, whom he met in Capri when JFK was not yet president. "She was a standard-bearer of fashion, she made factories work, she gave employment to seamstresses... As I always say, fashion is useless but necessary, naked you are nothing, clothes identify you, create industry, it is wonderful."
Elegant, clad in suit and tie ("I used to be eccentric but now I don't want to look ridiculous dressing like a young man") this man, whom his family defines as someone "of multiple talents and inexhaustible energy," repeated his formula for feeling young once more, before saying goodbye. Work. "I work because I am so happy to be alive that I want to make the most of it. I love feeling useful."