0000
Written
1968
Addressed to
2000

Dismisssing the Italian or Continental look of the 1950’s (Italy is third in Cardin sales, France first, England second), [Pierre] Cardin had three words for men’s fashions in his own lifetime: 'There were none. When I presented my line, there were only the eccentricities of youth.' And the future of men’s fashions? Cardin: 'I’m creating them now.' In the year 2,000? 'I’ll be dead.'

Joseph Barry

Cardin discusses “La Mode Masculine”

Annotation

Cardin did not die before the year 2000; he lived to ninety-eight, dying on December 29, 2020. His actual legacy was double-edged: he revolutionized menswear in the 1960s — the collarless suits the Beatles wore were copies of his — and invented modern fashion licensing, eventually stamping his name on over 900 products in 140 countries. The licensing made him fabulously wealthy and rendered the brand synonymous with cheap overextension. He was still designing at ninety, long after the future he claimed to be creating had come and gone.

What Actually Happened

Pierre Cardin did not die before the year 2000. He lived to ninety-eight, dying on December 29, 2020. By 2000 he had licensed his name to over 900 products across 140 countries, from furniture to sardines, generating enormous wealth but diluting the brand into a byword for overextension. He was still presenting collections in his nineties.

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