Original subtitles

If you're going to become an international brand,

you have to have a name people can pronounce

Pierre Cardin

Pierre Cardin

Pierre Cardin

Pierre Cardin

Pierre Cardin

Pierre

Pierre Cardin

Pierre

Pierre

Pierre

Pierre

Pierre

Pierre

Pierre

Pierre

Pierre

Pierre Cardin

Cardin

Cardin

Cardin

Cardin

Cardin

Cardin

Cardin

Cardin

Pierre Car-- oh you just say it.

Just say it, I'll drink.

That'd be - Pierre Cardin.

You know, Pierre Cardin.

There's no one on the planet

who's not going to recognize that name.

That's an exaggeration, but

it's not far from the truth.

Pierre Cardin

In a word, chic.

Many of his ideas have become

mainstays of the fashion industry.

They were incredibly original and innovative

when he brought them into play.

He just revolutionized our business.

A little bit of a sell-out.

A contradiction.

A control freak.

A label, a logo, a legend.

What's not to admire?

When Cardin takes someone in, and someone joins

the House of Cardin,

you're like joining a family.

The weird thing of course is that

he's thought of as French designer Pierre Cardin.

And he's not. He's Italian.

Mussolini's road to power began in 1922

when his fascist black-shirts marched on Rome.

Vive la France

Shouts ring from every throat.

Including that of mademoiselle.

It was a much smaller group or clique of people

in those days.

and so on.

At the end of the day

the real designers are the ones who know how to tailor.

Then you could never be starving

If you can tailor, you can eat.

Immediately after World War II,

he is connected to all these social events

that are legends.

He dressed Christian Dior as a lion.

Cardin made that costume.

This is 1948.

And then at the Beistegui Ball,

one of the great costume balls of the century,

he contributed thirty costumes.

On the Regio Canal, Venice,

the Labia Palace has transformed for one night

into a scene of 18th Century glory.

Fourteeth floor, full of clothes.

Here's the latest look from Paris,

filmed in Paris.

When I draw a dress, I'm not thinking tall or small,

Japanese or French or American or Australian girls.

I'm just thinking "dress"

to put the body in some wonderful form, you know.

He really brought that to the fore

during the 50s and 60s

where we were changing our idea

as to what could be in a fashion magazine.

Even from the very beginning,

he didn't go

for the conventional set of mannequins at that time.

If he felt that they were right to show his creations

and express his creativity and his designs,

then he chose, then, the right frame of mind.

It was a perfect marriage

of model and designer.

Once she was established, we knew

that she was the one that would be wearing

the main pieces of the season

because she did have a real knack

for wearing Cardin that none of them quite had.

The diversity was quite refreshing.

because during the 60s, here in the States,

we were experiencing some true ugliness.

I didn't like what my country was doing to people

that looked like me.

I still don't.

In the 60s, he decided that it was okay

to use a Japanese person.

It's okay to use a person that looked like me with brown skin.

What he was selling was not

a color of skin.

it's very important

that Hiroko was a model in the 50s

because it changes their perception of

A Japanese woman, or what beauty can be.

I was a Japanese, tattooed, lesbian.

I didn't want to ever model, but what made me do it

was because there was nobody

that represented anything like that.

And I thought, you know what,

if there's a window of opportunity,

politically, it had to be done.

With fashion, I mean, you can reach billions of people

with the cover of a magazine.

He was extremely instrumental

in being one of the designers to use models of diversity

and all color, so for that, I thank him.

The 1960s is this key decade in fashion

where we start to see this idea of

pre-War hierarchies of society should be broken down.

What's been called "The Youth Quake"

is a really big part of this.

Breaking from the past, not wanting to wear

what your parents wore.

His clothing definitely moved away

from having

anything to do with the actual shape of the female form.

So, of course, if you're wearing an A-Line dress,

it's much easier to move around

than it is if you're wearing a very tight, fitted dress.

So, in a sense, I think that being able to move freely

is empowering.

It was not only "Women"

and "Women of Freedom",

but here is a coloful, exclaimation point

at the end of a sentence.

I see Pierre Cardin as somebody who was a feminist

who understood also what women from the 60s and 70s

needed in a designer.

So Pierre Cardin was one of the first

to really create beautiful silhouettes,

beautiful clothes that were reasonably priced,

and were made of materials that were practical.

That you could wash and wear, or dry clean.

It's just-- it's just beautiful.

-If I stand up, will you see it? Yeah.

Okay.

Because it really is-- it really is kind of amazing.

With Cardin, menswear changed

so dramatically.

Because menswear was so based around that men wore suits.

So once we started to relax, a lot of people wanted Cardin

because it was modern, and it was young,

and it was different.

Paul, John, George and Ringo.

How did your style begin?

Well, we got it from Paris.

Yeah, Cardin.

Groups didn't use to have this sort of jacket.

they used to wear all new suits.

We adopted this fashion.

It's a French fashion.

From whom? Pierre Cardin!

When you're looking at a magazine,

and then you get to Cardin, and you go, "Wow!"

I've turned the page, and I've gone from

the sexy women with a rolled umbrella

and a little hat

and suddenly I've got a girl with a geometric

Vidal Sassoon haircut, and this amazing look,

and it's modern.

It says modern.

No man can fully grasp

how far or how fast we have come

Man in his quest for knowledge and progress

is determined and cannot be deterred

The exploration of space will go ahead.

With the circle is a perfect form.

A circle is also a sphere, which is a globe.

Which is a universe that he occupies.

I mean, he covers the globe.

He always has thought globally.

It also was a symbol of eternity,

and Pierre Cardin seems to be forever.

He was just a futurist.

He was a futurist in the way the designs looked.

He was a futurist in his idea

of how fashion can be a business.

He was a futurist in his...

sort of all-encompassing, all-embracing idea of

art, and performance art, and architecture,

and fashion, all being of one piece.

There's always something extra

It's true for his furniture, and it's true for his clothes.

And I think that's what makes him so appealing.

There's always a cherry on top.

Pierre Cardin was one of the pioneers

in making eyewear fashionable,

both sunglasses and prescription.

Prior to Pierre Cardin,

the choices in eyewear were gold rim,

tortoise, black and a combo frame

like what Kevin Costner wore in JFK.

All through the 70s and 80s, it was Pierre Cardin.

that propelled the eyewear industry into designer.

He certainly put power in the logo.

The Helvetica, the anthromorphic, bimorphic P.C.

He is not the first one to put a logo

on the outside, but he's one of the first

to know that he didn't have to do it discreetly.

Branding is really a perfect way

the aesthetics principles of this particular designer.

Clear the runway.

I mean, you can say the same thing happens

with beer or cigarettes.

is now fully recognized as branding.

I think the first time I heard about Pierre Cardin

was because someone I was dating was wearing the cologne.

The bottle was fantastic.

It was so chic architecturally just so extraordinary.

Part of what makes it so provocative and fun,

obviously references a penis.

That's sex!

Even these inexpensive towels

have a graphic image that evokes Pierre Cardin.

Wait! He did an AMC Javelin?

With elegant and colorful upholstery,

classic door panels,

and chic headliner.

The Cardin Javelin was really fully realized.

It was pretty awesome.

The Cardin option really gave them a piece of distinction

that no other manufacturer had.

Not content to being earthbound he lent his brand

and his ethos to a plane,

an executive jet by Westwind.

It seems to me that it would have been an impossible task

to keep track of it all.

somewhere in the world going rogue

and creating whatever they want

and putting a Pierre Cardin label on it.

From the very beginning, he never accepted any money.

He never took a loan from a bank.

Dior, the House of Dior, and the other Houses,

they have been developed.

But they have been developed by marketing teams

and by marriages and alliances with other big corporations.

Pierre Cardin belongs to Pierre Cardin.

Pierre Cardin on the cover of Time Magazine

is proof of the fact that he was well-regarded,

not just as a designer of frivolities for women

Welcome to Maxim's, my friend!

Of all the things he would buy in Paris,

he would buy the oldest Art Nouveau restaurant.

Please.

With Cardin, in spite of all the modernity,

in spite of all the synthetics, in spite of all the shine,

And that, I think, may be that

sitting somewhere inside his genetic make-up.

a certain warmth as a person

which we may or may not always see

in his public persona.

to frighten or scare us.

That already introduces

that idea of fantasy

and a big part of his fantasy is,

The world of the future he saw as something global.

He was in Japan

when you hardly saw Japanese in western clothing.

He was in China, when everyone was still in a Mao uniform.

He was in the Soviet Union when there was no fashion at all.

I mean, who ever thought of these places as markets?

to wear the clothes that they wanted to wear.

How many million dollars

did this man make last year?

His name is Pierre Cardin.

Burt Bacharach was the musical conductor

for Marlene Dietrich.

So apparently, Burt let her know big girl's coming over.

She did my sound check, she did my lighting,

then proceeded to walk into my dressing room

to look at the clothing I brought to wear.

She took a hanger out, threw it in the hall.

She was throwing my clothes out.

I thought the lady had lost her mind, Ok?

He was at, I think, every performance I did.

We get to the Pierre Cardin theater

and this is beautiful.

All glass.

71 was the year that we had pretty much

terrified everybody in rock-and-roll.

So, there we are, getting ready to do our show,

and ran it through the glass window.

They put Neil, my drummer, and myself,

in a closet, a broom closet,

with Bianca Jagger and Catherine Deneuve,

And I went,

When you think back of it now,

with 20/20 hindsight,

the idea of bringing Alice Cooper

into a theater like that,

I think he probably knew there was gonna be a riot,

I do remember when I met him,

I was probably twenty,

and I remember him saying to me,

And I was so shy, but it was such a big deal

that he noticed me, I felt.

And that he said this very particular thing to me,

started to make me think that women

all have a particular kind of beauty,

and that we are all like flowers,

and that we are all different kinds of flowers.

really stayed with me, and really meant a lot to me.

Watching Jeanne Moreau walk through a parking lot

is akin to watching

any other actress do a three-page monologue.

I guess a lot of people doubted there was something there

because they were more accustomed to the idea

of Pierre Cardin with a man than a woman.

why not with Jeanne Moreau?

for it to be part of their discussion with a journalist,

or an interview,

or the motivation for their seasonal collection.

Just for weekends, we fly

many times to the south of France,

also Tunisia or Italy for two or three days when we can.

We go to the country.

But in Paris, we are very few times out of the house together

We have very different lives.

He works very much,

and he wants to be very quiet,

a very quiet life.

Lovely house on the Seine...

and I think he'd rather be with very few friends.

I love to go many times to nightclubs

and things like that.

Of course, in 1961,

Pierre Cardin takes up with Jeanne Moreau.

The relationship between Andre and Pierre Cardin

survived this incident, and if I were Andre,

I would rather have infidelity with a woman than with a man.

But in the sort of history,

one gets the sense of him as a sort of a rock.

which is kind of a remarkable thing, right,

Andre Oliver dies in 1993 from AIDS.

I know he is hoping to build this tower in Venice.

until he sees that thing built.

One more time. - No.

and again, and again.

Yeah, people will always be inspired.

He is one of the greats.

I feel young.