On the centenary of Pierre Cardin's birth, this volume looks back at
the designer's early career to discover the inspirations behind his
later iconic work.
Pierre Cardin's designs were worn by an international elite of beautiful
women, from Jackie Kennedy to Lauren Bacall and Jeanne Moreau. A close
friend of André Courrèges and Paco Rabanne, Cardin revolutionized modern
fashion in the mid-1960s, creating iconic designs that continue to
resonate today. His many talents and mastery of materials--from fabrics
to plastics--extended from haute couture to ready-to-wear, menswear,
jewelry, furniture design, perfumes, and accessories, while his business
acumen led him to create a business empire that stretched from China to
the United States.
In this volume, longtime Cardin collaborator Jean-Pascal Hesse shares
his intimate knowledge of the designer's early career in Paris and
analyzes the creative influences and partnerships that inspired Cardin
to design some of the most emblematic haute couture creations of the
1950s and 1960s, as well as the space age-inflected Cosmocorps work,
which presciently explored gender fluidity. Drawing from a broad range
of sources that Hesse has been gathering for more than two decades, this
work features personal recollections from Cardin himself, in addition to
numerous previously unpublished photographs and documents recounting his
early years in Christian Dior's studio, his success in the United States
in the 1950s and 1960s, and his profound interest in Japanese art and
design.
