Pierre Cardin at Barcelona Fashion Week January 28, 2012 -
Josep LAGO / AFP
Monument of French couture, Pierre Cardin died Tuesday at the age of 98 in Paris.
From New Look to Beatles stage costumes to
bowler hats and leather boots
, the famous designer has never stopped inventing fashion for the “world of tomorrow”.
His grand-nephew, Louis Cardin-Edwards, is the only one in his family to know Pierre Cardin both in his private life and in his professional environment.
Fashion designer of the fashion house for twenty years, he pays tribute for
20 Minutes
to one of the greatest couturiers in our history who never "let the public figure" into the private sphere.
What kind of man was your uncle in the workplace?
Was he different from the one you celebrated Christmas with?
It was not the same man.
He was very rigorous in his work, very demanding.
He knew what he wanted.
He was there for the creation.
That's what was so exciting about him.
There was not a drawing that escaped his validation.
There could be a stack of 200 drawings, he would go through them one by one and correct them.
Likewise in the workshop, he went through all the clothes and few were those that escaped his scissors.
Because he had the easy scissors stroke!
Did your outlook on him change when you started working with him?
The two spheres were separate and at the same time they were complementary.
In private life, he passed on his life experience, and in work, his tailoring knowledge.
When we were one-on-one, he could talk to me for hours about the subjects.
How to get such an effect with such material.
It was passionate.
At work, he was particularly demanding of me.
Either there was something wrong or he wasn't saying anything.
When I introduced him to a role model and he didn't say anything, it was a pretty good sign.
On a daily basis, how did his genius manifest itself?
He created constantly and especially at night.
In the morning he would arrive with a stack of drawings.
He could come up with an idea for a dress or with the idea of a new sport.
He was making a sketch with players on a field and he explained his new game to us. The idea sometimes seemed far-fetched.
And he had to reproduce the lines of the playing field he had just imagined.
He had no limit in creation.
He could move from one world to another.
With a simple light bulb, he imagined the shape of a dress, a bag, a wallpaper pattern… A comb served as a model for the fringes of the skirts.
What is striking is the freedom with which he did things.
The look of others did not matter.
It's a great lesson: tell yourself no matter what others think, no matter what others do.
And what kind of uncle was he?
He had the role of the patriarch, he was very unifying.
He loved to tell jokes, life stories, family stories.
We listened to his adventures.
The unusual encounter he liked to tell was the story of a clairvoyant who, when he was in his twenties, told him that her name would be known around the world.
“Even in Sydney,” she insisted.
And he didn't know where Sydney was.
He didn't really believe this prediction.
And finally fate agreed with this clairvoyant.
I also think of the story of his arrival in Paris.
He had the name of a contact who was to help him get hired in a fashion house.
Paquin, I believe.
This contact was located on rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré.
It was a winter morning and my uncle was looking for the building number.
He meets a man in the deserted street and asks him for help in finding his way.
The man asks who he's looking for at this number, and my uncle replies: "A friend called so and so."
And the man, surprised, retorts: "You are a liar, this gentleman so and so, it is me and I do not know you".
Except he was so stunned by his nerve that they went for a drink and finally this man managed to get him into the fashion house.
How have the last few months been?
He kept coming every day, maybe a little less lately, with the Covid-19.
But otherwise, he would come to the workshop every day to submit sketches.
About ten days ago, I came to present him some models.
Until the end, he will have had a model in his hands.
I had the immense joy of having been able to show him and have him validate my last work.
On a personal level, it is my pride: that the last model he saw was a model that I presented to him.
He did not verbalize a compliment, but he made it clear to me with a gesture.
For me, this is one of the most important moments of the last twenty years working for him.
How do you see the rest?
The creation continues, this is the most important.
The imprint he left will last.
I will continue to work for his workshop.
There is still a mountain of sketches to be made.
We still have a lot of work to do.
It is not finished.
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