Pierre Cardin Opens Museum in Paris

French fashion designer Pierre Cardin has announced he will open a museum in Paris’s Le Marais district on November 13th, AFP reports. Located in a 2,000 square meter venue at 5 rue Saint-Merri, the organization will gather 200 of his haute couture designs, together with examples of furniture design.

The museum has been conceived to retrace Cardin’s 40-year-long career, from his first collection in 1953 and his iconic “bubble dress” (1954) to his more recent endeavors.

Born in San Biagio near Treviso in 1922, Cardin worked with Elsa Schiaparelli, and headed Christian Dior’s tailleure atelier before opening his own maison in 1950.

The new museum, called, rather grandly, “Passé-Présent-Futur” (Past-Present-Future), replaces another Pierre Cardin museum, which opened in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Ouen in 2006. That initial institutional effort has since closed down.

Speaking at a runaway show of his collection last fall, the nonagenarian fashion designer displayed incredible stamina. “I was once the youngest designer,” he said. “Now I’m the eldest. Work is my life, it’s my happiness. I’ll continue as long as I can.”

Cardin’s is the latest of several fashion houses to open up institutions in the French capital in recent months. Bernard Arnault unveiled his Frank Gehry-designed Louis Vuitton Foundation just last week during Paris’s FIAC (see “Take a Sneak Peak at the Fondation Louis Vuitton“).


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