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French designer Pierre Cardin dies aged 98

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Pierre Cardin, who has died aged 98, found fame for his geometric designs and brash business sense.
Camera IconPierre Cardin, who has died aged 98, found fame for his geometric designs and brash business sense.

French couturier Pierre Cardin, who made his name by selling designer clothes to the masses and his fortune by being the first to exploit that name as a brand for promoting everything from cars to perfume, has died at the age of 98.

In a career spanning more than 60 years, Cardin drew scorn and admiration alike from fellow fashion designers for his brash business sense, and influenced catwalks with his space-age, futuristic bubble dresses and geometrical cuts and patterns.

Cardin, who was a mentor to designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier, was active in fashion circles until the last, still taking young designers under his wing, and attending parties and events.

In the 1950s, Cardin became the first designer to sell collections in department stores, and the first to enter the licensing business for perfumes, accessories and even food - a move which later drove profits for many other fashion houses.

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"It's all the same to me whether I am doing sleeves for dresses or table legs," a quote on his website once read.

Armani chocolates, Bulgari hotels and Gucci sunglasses all owe their existence to Cardin's realisation that a fashion brand's glamour had endless merchandising potential.

Over the years his name has been stamped on razor blades, household goods, and tacky accessories.

He once said it would not bother him to have his initials etched into rolls of toilet paper.

His detractors accused him of destroying the value of his brand and the notion of luxury in general. But he seemed largely unaffected by criticism.

Born near Venice on July 2, 1922, to French parents of Italian descent, Cardin was educated in the French city of Saint Etienne.

He went to work for a tailor in nearby Vichy at age 17 and dreamed of becoming an actor, as well as modelling and dancing professionally.

When he moved to Paris in 1945, he made theatrical masks and costumes for Jean Cocteau's film, Beauty and the Beast, and a year later joined the then-little-known Christian Dior.

His first big commercial venture, when he teamed up with the Printemps department store in the late 1950s, led to him being briefly expelled from the guild of French fashion designers, the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture.

He also blazed a trail outside France long before other fashion houses in search of new markets.

He presented a collection in Communist China in 1979 when it was still largely closed to the outside world. And just two years after the Berlin Wall came down, in 1991, a Cardin fashion show on Moscow's Red Square attracted a crowd of 200,000.

His empire embraces perfumes, foods, industrial design, real estate, entertainment and even fresh flowers.

"I've always tried to be different, to be myself," he told Reuters.

"Whether people like it or not ... that's not what matters."

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