PIERRE Cardin, the visionary designer and licensing pioneer who invented the business of fashion as it is conducted today, has died in France. He was 98.
His death was confirmed on Tuesday by the French Academy of Fine Arts. He died at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, just outside Paris, his family said, according to Agence France-Presse.
“Fashion is not enough,” Mr. Cardin once told Eugenia Sheppard, the American newspaper columnist and fashion critic.
“I don’t want to be just a designer.”
He never was just that. He clothed the famous — artists, political luminaries, tastemakers and members of the haute bourgeoisie — but he was also a merchant to the masses with an international brand, his name affixed to an outpouring of products, none too exalted or too humble to escape his avid eye.
There were bubble dresses and bath towels, aviator jumpsuits and automobiles, fragrances and ashtrays, even
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