bluestocking
c pierre cardin evolution
Before Giorgio Armani and Ralph Lauren set their
elegant feet on the design scene, another style icon—
Pierre Cardin—blazed the road to the well-appointed
home. For this Frenchman is credited with being the
first fashion designer to launch a furniture line and
also with being the founding father of prêt-à-porter.
“I am both an artist and industrialist,” he tells 20th
century decorative arts expert Benjamin Loyauté in
the opening pages of Pierre Cardin Evolution, which
examines how this revolutionary thinker funneled
his sculptural approach to clothing into the domestic
divine. “We created and put our names to everything
we could, as industrialists do: coffee makers, lamps,
cars, planes, household linen, watches, kitchens and
more.” The book focuses heavily, albeit not exclusively,
on the interior chapter of Cardin’s career, when during
his creative heyday, from 1977-1980, he introduced
more than 200 models, including lighting, tables, chairs,
desks, storage units and shelving. Like his apparel, his
ruminations on decor were far from ordinary.
The 1970s witnessed the boom of synthetic material,
which allowed for more organic, liquid shapes. No
longer was the designer limited to the T-square or
the 90-degree angle; plastic, polyurethane, foam and
resin lent themselves to manipulation into any shape
imaginable. “We could exploit all its possibilities to
create forms both eccentric and functional,” recalls
Cardin, who at the tender age of eight was already a
fabricant de meubles, using leftover wood shavings and
