Pierre Cardin

1960s

In early 1960, Cardin showed a full menswear line for the first time. This 1960 menswear collection attracted international attention with its narrow "Cylinder" silhouette (called by some a "cigarette" shape), natural shoulders, center-vented suit jackets, foulard shirts, prominent belts, and, above all, high-buttoning, collarless suits, famously copied by the Beatles' tailor three years later.

Cardin's women's collections in the early 1960s often concentrated on more flowing lines than previously, lines that were sometimes said to be influenced by the 1930s. To his favorite pleats, batwing sleeves, cowl necklines, scarf tops, side closures, and bowl hats he added scalloping, open backs, deep decolletage, capelet collars, tailored shawls, floating panels, bias cuts, and extensive chiffon. His autumn 1960 collection was particularly well received, with a focus on slim coats, soft dresses, and extensive scalloping, paired with dramatic handbags and close-fitting, helmet-like cloche hats that looked like they were straight out of the late 1920s or early 1930s. His hems stayed mostly at the knee for daywear but were lengthened by several inches for fall of 1962, giving an even more thirties-like appearance. This fluid thirties-ish look would extend into 1965 with handkerchief hems and scalloped skirts.

Though Cardin's womenswear of the early sixties hadn't reached the Dior levels of prestige predicted for him in the late fifties, his work continued to be well received in Europe. In the US, however, his women's clothes were still considered overly avant-garde and sales remained low.

Cardin traveled to the Soviet Union for the first time in 1963, two years after the country had first sent cosmonauts into orbit and the year Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to enter outer space. Cardin was directly inspired by seeing Tereshkova in her cosmonaut jumpsuit and helmet and would soon begin introducing into his work elements of Space Age styles.

Possible first signs of Space Age influence appeared in fall of 1963, when Cardin joined other designers in showing a more youthful silhouette consisting at base of hip-length blouson-like tops/jackets over narrow skirts hitting at the top of the knee worn with muffled collars, helmet-like or hood-like hats and caps, tights, and flat boots, with Cardin's boots reaching the knee. It was in this collection that he would first present the geometric cutouts that would become widespread by 1966. Cardin's 1963 cutouts were applied to tunics worn over slim dresses.

In 1964, he showed low-slung waists and tights that matched upper garments, including patterned tights matching patterned tops, a characteristic trend of the mid-sixties, and he began adding simple, top-of-the-knee A-line shift dresses emblazoned with large geometric shapes such as targets, as Paris picked up on London's Mod boutique culture of the early 1960s. He also showed the lowest necklines of his career, with décolletage on evening dresses reaching well below the waist but impropriety averted by inserting panels of flesh-toned fabric.

Perhaps surprisingly for a designer considered avant-garde, Cardin resisted and even denounced pants for women as they rose in popularity in the mid-sixties after André Courrèges promoted them for everyday wear in 1964, a stance Cardin would maintain until 1968.

Cardin launched a men's ready-to-wear line in 1964 that included numerous turtlenecks, a garment that would become a mainstay of men's fashion during the decade. By 1965, his men's suits had evolved into a more shaped, fitted style, usually three-piece, sometimes double-breasted, featuring longer jackets with marked waists, deeper vents, and wider lapels on both jackets and vests; and slim pants with a slight flare below the knee. Ties were wider. Shirts were colored or striped and had more prominent collars. Footwear was often an ankle-high boot style that came to be associated with Cardin, designed to maintain a clean line while concealing the socks. This silhouette was inspired by the Mod menswear trends of the UK.

In 1965, he shortened all of his day skirts to mid-thigh or higher and moved further into a Space Age look, with conical dresses, coats, and capes featuring high, geometric collars and hoods and prominent hem-banding, all worn with geometric headgear, tights, and flat shoes, sometimes with spats. Short, softer chemise dresses were also shown, and eveningwear turned on long, easy, sweatery T-shirt dresses shimmering with sequins in bands of bright hues. He brought in more East Asians as models, notably Cambodian Nom Srey Neang.

By 1966, Cardin favored an even closer fit for his menswear; slightly wider, more squared, yet unpadded shoulders on longer jackets; two-piece or three-piece suits, the vests now sans lapels; inverted pleats for jackets instead of vents; higher shirt collars; larger tie knots on even wider ties; and flared pants cut slightly longer in the back to visually lengthen the leg. Turtlenecks were now presented even for evening, a trend that would become characteristic of the second half of the decade. More casual clothes were also slim, even tight, and featured turtlenecks, jackets with zippers closing fronts and pockets, trousers with stripes along the outer seam, and prominent belts, with summer clothes more colorful and including striped shirts worn open enough to expose the chest and flared pants with colorful side stripes. All of this became very influential and popular, including in the US.

Cardin resigned from the Chambre Syndicale in 1966 and began showing his collections in his own venue. He also designed uniforms for Pakistan International Airlines, which were introduced from 1966 to 1971 and became an instant hit.

Cardin had entered his Space Age phase by 1966, as had much of the rest of the fashion world following the launch of the Soviet Union's space program, André Courrèges's landmark 1964 and '65 collections, and the widespread influence of Britain's Mod culture. His menswear collections now also included a Cosmonaut or Cosmocorps line characterized by jumpsuits, hip-belted tunics, and tights-like or flared trousers, all with prominent, often ring-pulled zippers and ultra-modern boots that sometimes rose to the knee.

His Space Age womenswear of 1966 featured mini lengths, extensive cutouts, geometric necklines, rolled hems and collars, and cutaway shoulders. He was the leading advocate of cutouts and prominent zippers as those details peaked among designers in 1966. His cutouts included bare midriffs overlain with geometric shapes. He liked geometric diamond forms, jackets that fell to a low triangular peak at the bottom of the front closure, T-bar cutout necklines, metal neck rings anchoring shift dresses, and the large-scale targets, circles, and triangles that were popular at the time across simple A-line shift minidresses. Colors ranged from vivid and graphic to warm and autumnal. He presented a few unusual dirndl-gathered miniskirts of a bell or barrel shape slightly bolstered with minute lace petticoats and given bounce with a stiffened rolled hem that may have presaged Cardin's experimentation with hooped minis in the 1970s and '80s. That year, he showed tights and shoes that matched his miniskirts, often having them all exactly the same color, a combination he felt made mini lengths more wearable for women of various ages. He also introduced the combination of jumper minidress over a bodystocking or over turtleneck and tights, a functional dress scheme also favored by other designers of the period and one that Cardin would continue to show well into the seventies. His jumper minidresses of 1966 often featured deeply cutaway shoulders, geometric cutouts, and suspender-like straps somewhat reminiscent of the suspender minis Courrèges had shown in 1965. Shoes were flat and square-toed in the dominant style of the time. Cardin's 1966 Space Age look was completed by dome-shaped hats and flaring, helmet-like, geometric headwear that covered the entire head except for the eyes and resembled similar styles shown by Rudi Gernreich in 1964. He made his penchant for scalloped edges fit the new geometric mode by making the scallops prominent and oversized on the hem or the leading edge of asymmetric jacket closures that often fastened on the far side, as Cardin had long preferred, but now were closed with tabs. Fabrics were often the substantial double-faced ones of the period also favored by Courrèges.

Cardin made capes and ponchos look futuristic via geometric circular or square armholes and precisely curvilinear arches cut into the sides for the arms. Cape and poncho sleeves were also shown. He adapted his love of asymmetric hems, earlier a part of his 1930s look, to the new Space Age period by showing hemlines that were shorter on one side than the other, sometimes called a tilted hem, seen especially on evening dresses; miniskirts longer in the front than in the back; skirts consisting of strips, panels, and loops of fabric of various lengths and widths, some petal-like; pleated skirts with fluted hems that curled up and down; and other unusual forms. These trends became particularly notable beginning in 1967. The skirts of strips, loops, and panels would be shown through 1970.

Interest in Space Age looks would peak in mainstream fashion during 1966 and part of 1967 and then most designers would move into other areas. Cardin was one of a small group of designers who remained enamored of futuristic Space Age looks for several more years. The best known of these designers were André Courrèges, Rudi Gernreich, Emanuel Ungaro, and Paco Rabanne, all of whom tied their ideas of the future to mini lengths. Cardin's work was noted for including a variety of lengths from 1967 on, particularly his characteristic asymmetric hems, while keeping it all futuristic-looking.

His 1967 women's collections continued with zippers, pleating, side closures, scallops, jumper minidresses, one-shouldered evening dresses, geometric necklines, sculptural metal collars, rolled hems and edges, and other familiar Cardin features and added diagonal closures, a greater variety of geometric pockets, and metal or metal-looking plastic used for tab closures, wide belts, ring collars, and hem bands. For fall, he included deeply flaring, Medieval-looking sleeves. frog closings, large collars that framed the head from the back, complexly gored skirts, front lacing on jackets and coats, coats with big, colored circles on them with matching deep hems of fox dyed to match the circles, completely sunburst-pleated capes, and more black than usual. Many of his silhouettes were in the flared trapeze/A-line/conical shapes widespread at the time.

His Space Age womenswear during these few years was in line with the mood of the design world and became very influential, even in the US, where new Cardin women's boutiques opened in prominent department stores. By 1967, some of his adult styles for both men and women were also offered in juniors' and children's sizes.

HIs menswear from the last three years of the decade enjoyed a mass audience, still outselling his womenswear by a large margin. He continued with his shaped, fitted, wide-lapelled, wide-tied, flared-leg suits, plus lots of zippers and turtlenecks for more casual clothes. His Cosmonaut outfits grew in popularity, consisting of fitted, belted, often sleeveless tunics over slim, often flared trousers in various fabrics, paired with turtlenecks and boots.

Cardin continued with his futuristic womenswear in 1968, showing synthetic outfits of molded Cardine fabric whose surfaces stood out in geometric forms, garments that formed stark geometric shapes when the arms were held out to the sides, metallic silver leather, phosphorescent fabrics (also shown by Paco Rabanne), light-up electric dresses (also shown by Diana Dew), increased use of metal, and extensive use of cutouts, sometimes directly over each breast. He used vinyl and other forms of plastic liberally. He and fellow futurist André Courrèges favored a basic, versatile dress scheme of ribknit bodystocking or turtleneck and tights under various forms of jumper minidresses or microminiskirts. Some of Cardin's footwear from 1967 to 1969 was provided by François Villon, including the thigh- or hip-high leather or vinyl stretch boots that were popular with designers at the end of the sixties, Cardin's often paired with matching geometric bonnet-hats and his Space Age-looking geometric minidresses and turtlenecks.

He finally showed women's trousers in 1968, initially as part of his unisex clothes, an important trend of this enlightened era. He produced identical tunics, turtlenecks, flared trousers, hip belts, and boots for both sexes, and also made ribknit jumpsuits/bodystockings and ribknit trousers for women that extended into a thickened flare over the top of the foot. He now applied his favorite batwing sleeves to jumpsuits that formed a geometric triangle shape when the arms were extended to the sides.

Also in 1968, Cardin opened a furniture and interior decor store called Environnement.

1960s film and TV costuming

After launching his design career doing costumes for Jean Cocteau's 1946 film La Belle et La Bête, Cardin would return to costuming in the 1960s and outfit several films, mostly those starring close friend Jeanne Moreau. These included Joseph Losey's Eva (1962), Marcel Ophüls's Banana Peel (1963), Jean-Louis Richard's Mata Hari, Agent H21 (1964), Anthony Asquith's The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964), Louis Malle's Viva Maria! (1965), and François Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black (1968). Those not featuring Moreau included Anthony Asquith's The V.I.P.s (1963) and Anthony Mann's A Dandy in Aspic (1968). For François Truffaut's influential 1962 film Jules et Jim, star Jeanne Moreau wore several Cardin pieces that were from her own wardrobe.

Cardin also created Patrick MacNee's costumes for season five of UK television series The Avengers, airing in 1967.