PARIS — No visit to Pierre Cardin’s cluttered office here would be complete without the futuristic couturier rattling off a litany of his past achievements and dusting off myriad press clippings to bolster his case for greatness.
Cardin brags he was the first — and only — designer to be elected to the Academie Francaise; that he pioneered empire-building by buying hotels, restaurants and theaters, and that his name, splashed on some 800 licensed products, remains one of fashion’s best known. Despite his incontestable achievements, one gets the impression the still-sprightly 83-year-old Cardin feels shortchanged in terms of modern prestige.
So it’s understandable he’s reveling in his latest bragging rights: the Barbarella-worthy furniture he created in the Seventies is garnering serious interest from design cognoscenti and collectors alike. In a survey of Cardin’s furniture published in Paris this month (Flammarion), contemporary industrial designer Marc Newson tells an interviewer that Cardin wielded a strong influence on his sensibility.
“He was a major figure turned toward the future,” said Newson.
Certainly the surge in appeal in Seventies designs, from Joe Colombo to Maria Pergay, has brought Cardin a new cool factor. But experts also stressed he was a pioneer in blurring the lines between fashion and broader design. That, they said, assured his important status in the development of lifestyle branding.
“Remember, Cardin is really the forerunner to all of the home lines that are everywhere today,” said auctioneer Richard Wright, the founder of Wright auction house in Chicago. “He was the first to cross over from fashion to a wider design statement,” not just a few pieces for the elite, but a true line meant for real distribution. Wright added that, while prices at auction for Cardin-designed pieces are rising, his furniture remains undervalued. For example, in June the auction house sold a Cardin dining table for $1,800 and a large cabinet for $1,400, although prices in Paris already are starting to climb well above those levels.
“While the look is becoming fashionable, it remains on the cutting edge of collectibility” — a good thing for buyers — Wright said.
For his part, Cardin is treating the interest as he always does: as an opportunity to repeat that he always has been ahead of the curve.
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“People are afraid of newness,” he said in an interview in his office overlooking the French presidential palace. “Much of what I did was scandalous at the time.”
Stacked pell-mell around Cardin are old magazines, books, photographs and other relics of his past glories. The walls are painted green; electric wires coil wildly about the floor. For a design maverick, the atmosphere is decidedly unpolished.
“Really, I should redo this place,” said Cardin, waving his hands in the air. “It needs it, I know. I’ve been here for 50 years. But I think it has a heart to it and a link to the past. I don’t know why I should change it now.”
Cardin started designing furniture in the late Sixties in a factory on the outskirts of Paris, where he employed some eight artisans.
“I’ve always loved furniture,” he explained. “I first designed furniture with a friend when I was eight years old. His father had a factory. It’s always been a part of my universe.”
One of Cardin’s hallmarks is his proclivity for geometric shapes, particularly the circle, and his love of lacquer. One Cardin-designed desk, for example, looks like a pair of inverted triangles.
“I’ve traveled so much — I think there are only a couple of African countries, and North Korea, that I haven’t visited,” he offered. “I was inspired by the world. The pyramids inspired me. I loved lacquer. It’s used a lot in Asia and Japan. It’s modern and timeless, a beautiful material.”
Cardin also worked in resin and stainless steel, the other hallmarks of the disco decade. In 1978, Cadillac issued a limited-edition Cardin-designed Eldorado with 30 layers of red lacquer. That same year, he applied his hand to decorate a sleek jet.
“We made editions of seven or eight for most of the furniture,” said Cardin. “Since they were art pieces, we had to limit the production. I still have a lot of the pieces today.”
Cardin said he approached furniture in a similar way to fashion. “It’s sculpture, but practical sculpture. I have always been attracted to roundness, the male and female form, the way bodies fit today. Sexuality. Procreation. That was scandalous at the time.”
Cardin, dressed in a tan suit, showed off a picture of the theater he designed in Paris, with its ultra-sleek auditorium.
“When you looked down on the seats from the balcony, there was a geometric color pattern,” he said. “I was inspired by a Serge Poliakoff painting.”
He held out a picture of a multicolored sofa in thick sculpted wool, circa 1977. “The idea for this was ecological furniture,” he said. “I’ve always had my own personality. I’ve never copied. With these pieces, I wanted furniture that was like a plant. A sofa like a leaf. I wanted to sleep in a leaf.
“Look at this,” he continued, plucking from a nearby shelf a multifaceted silver box that unfolds to reveal triangular morsels of chocolate. “I designed this for a chocolate salon. I won a prize. People didn’t understand that you could package chocolate like this. I was inspired by Sputnik.”
Though Cardin stopped making furniture some 15 years ago, when environmental concerns forced him to close his factory near Paris, he has projects for the future.
“Next year I’m going to open a furniture factory in Vietnam,” he said. “They can still do the kind of lacquer that I want. ”