Dec 30, 2020
Pierre Cardin, the visionary designer who clothed the elite but also transformed the business of fashion, reaching the masses by affixing his name to an outpouring of merchandise ranging from off-the-rack apparel to bath towels, has died in France. He was 98.
His death was confirmed Tuesday by the French Academy of Fine Arts. He died at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, just outside Paris, his family said, according to Agence France-Presse.
“Fashion is not enough,” Cardin once told Eugenia Sheppard, the American newspaper columnist and fashion critic. “I don’t want to be just a designer.”
He was never just that. He dressed the famous — artists, political luminaries, tastemakers and members of the haute bourgeoisie — but he was also a licensing pioneer, a merchant to the general public with his name on a cornucopia of products, none too exalted or too humble to escape his avid eye.