Famous couturier Pierre Cardin died Thursday at the age of 98.
In 2018, he returned to Isabelle Morizet's microphone over more than 70 years of career.
He tells the story of his extraordinary destiny made up of hard work, talent and the fortunate coincidences that allowed him to build an empire.
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A war, a bicycle and a clairvoyant.
Fate is sometimes due to a strange alignment of planets.
That of Pierre Cardin, who disappeared Tuesday at the age of 98, could have been quite different.
Without exceptional circumstances, the great couturier would undoubtedly have been a winegrower in Veneto, in the right family lineage.
“At the time, the farmers were lords,” assured the couturier, guest of Isabelle Morizet's show,
There is not only one life in life
in 2018. “People who had land represented the power of a village or town. "
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He ultimately did not have any land.
But he still became a lord in his own way.
Pierre Cardin liked to recall it: "I can dine in my restaurants all over the world, sleep in my hotels, dress myself in my lines of clothes, perfume myself with my perfumes, drink my wine, store my things in the furniture that I create."
The result of 70 years of career.
And a combination of happy luck, hard work and a certain talent.
Go up in Paris by bike
On July 2, 1922, it was in the middle of the vineyards, in a village 50 km from Venice, that little Pietro Cardin was born.
He is the last of a family of 6 children.
The Great War and its consequences are the first to upset Pietro's trajectory.
When he was 2 years old, his parents emigrated to France.
First trip and first vivid memory: "We took the Mont-Cenis tunnel and I started screaming. There was no light in the tunnel and I thought I had gone blind."
Years later, it's another journey that will change his destiny.
By bike, this one.
At 17, in occupied France, Pierre Cardin had the crazy idea of crossing the demarcation line to go to Paris.
The penniless Italian emigrant is ready to do anything to get out of his condition.
"I was free and I had a kind of arrogance to go to work in Paris."
But arrived at the Pont de Moulin, the teenager is arrested by the Germans.
"They put me in a truck all day, a big closed black truck. I lost 3 kilos in one day. I thought I would die. Then they saw that I was Catholic, they told me. released. "
Help from a clairvoyant
U-turn.
Paris, it will not be for now.
On the way back, the cyclist stops at Vichy, the capital of occupied France.
By chance, he stops in front of a clothing store.
And decides to push the door.
"I had to live, he remembers. I had no money."
Help from fate: the store manager agrees to employ it.
"He put me in the workshop, I saw all the Germans and all the rich people of Vichy parade," continues Pierre Cardin.
The young man begins by sweeping before being gradually introduced to sewing.
At the Liberation, Pierre Cardin had only one idea in mind: to go to Paris.
Not by bicycle this time, but by train.
Before his departure, a clairvoyant gives him a little help.
She gave him the address of a man in Paris, who could introduce him to Paquin, the largest fashion house of the time.
"I left with this one address in my pocket, 82, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré", slips Pierre Cardin.
"I have met all the greatest"
Once there, he stumbles upon this man in the street.
The magic happens once again.
"He introduced me to Paquin!"
At that time, the fashion house was working on costumes for
Beauty and the Beast
, the film by Jean Cocteau.
At just 20 years old, the young Italian emigrant then met all the older ones: Cocteau, Camus, Visconti, etc.
And all of them immediately want to work with him.
That's it, his career is launched.
He then worked for a few years at Dior.
Then go up to his first house.
Pierre Cardin was born.
Bubble dresses, thermoformed fabrics, kinetic skirts, cosmonaut suits, ready-to-wear before everyone else, the first men's fashion shows, trade with Communist China from the beginning of the 1980s followed. … See you soon in the spring of 96, Pierre Cardin said without blinking: "If I had to start all over again, I would do everything exactly the same."