Paris (AFP)
French couturier Pierre Cardin, visionary stylist and ready-to-wear pioneer, died Tuesday at the age of 98, his family told AFP.
Son of Italian immigrants who became a businessman with a world-famous name, Pierre Cardin died in the morning at the American hospital in Neuilly, west of Paris.
"Day of great sadness for all our family, Pierre Cardin is no longer. The great couturier that he was, has crossed the century, leaving France and the world a unique artistic heritage in fashion, but not only", writes his family in a statement.
"We are all proud of his tenacious ambition and the daring he has shown throughout his life. A modern man of many talents and inexhaustible energy, he joined the flow of the world very early on. globalization of goods and trade ", according to the text.
Before many others, Pierre Cardin had opened a "corner" in a large store, made by men.
And adopted on a large scale a system of licenses which ensured a distribution in the whole world, affixing its name on products as diverse as ties, cigarettes, perfumes or mineral water.
A pioneer, he turned very early on to Asia where he enjoyed great notoriety: he went to Japan in 1957, then in full reconstruction, and had organized parades in China in 1979.
"Italian by birth, Pierre Cardin has never forgotten his origins while bringing unconditional love to France," writes his family.
"Supreme consecration, he is finally the first couturier to enter the Académie des beaux-arts, making fashion recognized as an art in its own right. Today, his academician's sword, which he himself created, attests to this. and on which are engraved the symbols of its success, ”she concludes.
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