Space odysseys with goofy and pimp-dressed aliens, disco beats, Pupa make-up-colored cheerful young faces, metallic pants and tops that you can prick or even cut yourself on. The first triumphs and scandals of Pierre Cardin came at the end of the fifties, but his true time is the extravagant, dancing eighties and rebellious nineties. At least in our area. It seems strange that today, so, it seems, early, we are talking about the centenary of the birth of the French couturier.
A student of the extravagant Elsa Schiaparelli and the refined Christian Dior. Co-author of the famous New look and the “Bar” jacket, which restored the aesthetically despondent post-war Europe to the image of a sleek, La Belle Epoque flower woman. Inventor of mega-avant-garde and completely unadapted to everyday life, inspired by science pop space collections. Cardin was an innovator and visionary of fashion. He found inspiration in everything – from casting molds to Chinese pagodas. It was he who founded ready-to-wear and turned a not-too-profitable art business, dependent on capricious rich clients, the “fashion house” into a powerful empire that, under licensing agreements, branded things sometimes very far from the beauty industry. Almost everything came out under the Pierre Cardin brand – from teapots to wallpaper.
In the seventies, his products and his replicas flooded almost all countries, it is not surprising that the name of the couturier entered the Soviet film folklore, separated by a comma, with “good boots”.
“Here, look, I got a batch file! They say it’s from Cardin! Only 50 rubles!” Verochka chattered in the encyclopedia of late Soviet life “Office Romance”. – “Thanks. Write an order, ”Kalugin ignores the topic, but takes the batch file without looking. Musthave and good price.
Later, non-conformist, wrinkled, very French body shirts “from Cardin”, reminiscent of student unrest rather than boring princesses clad in black brocade and pulled at the waist, will be chosen by black grouse claiming to be bohemian. Of those who dreamed of becoming an actress, but are studying to be an engineer, and in a tube, along with “drawing torment”, carry a can of gin and tonic, or even “Pink Dog” – well, yes, God help them. Batniki were sewn off, by the way, in our country – in thirty factories throughout the Union. After meeting Raisa Maksimovna, the enterprising couturier signed a contract with the USSR Ministry of Light Industry for the production of clothing.
But this is all about business, and the real Cardin is about creativity. The real Cardin is, of course, not ready-to-wear, knocking down amber, ylang-ylang or wallpaper in a middle-class gold stripe, but pure geometry, kinetics, drive, color blocks and a complete disregard for proportions and a sense of propriety.
The real Cardin is the bubble dress and Egg carton dress inspired by egg containers, graphics, cutouts, epaulettes, metallics and portholes, silver. The woman from Cardin is Aelita, who flew to us straight from another galaxy. Fascinated by science fiction and space exploration, in the early 1970s, Cardin became even closer to this wonderful and mysterious world by wearing the space suit of astronaut Buzz Aldrin.
In his indomitable desire to conquer the world, Cardin staked on extraordinary shows. His shows were held in the Gobi desert, on board an aircraft carrier in Chinese Tianjin, at the famous Villa Medici in Rome, in the White Palace in Belgrade.
After Dior, he became one of the first Western couturiers who came to the USSR. It was then that trains, masks, sequins, crinolines and throated hats fell upon us, and then, on June 30, 1991, Red Square rejoiced, welcoming its Marshal of Fashion.
“The applauding, dancing crowd that evening on Vasilyevsky Spusk was strikingly different from our usual one. Depressing seriousness, political intransigence, hopeless concern – all this seemed to have never happened, – Alexander Kabakov wrote in his report. And finally, fireworks! This must be imagined: not in honor of a state celebration, but in honor of a foreign artist, white, pink, yellow sparks were torn and scattered over the Moscow River.
The spectacle amazed even fashion-savvy Maya Plisetskaya. “I stood next to Cardin, not believing my eyes, asking to pinch me harder, wanting to make sure that this was reality and not a dream,” the ballerina admitted.
Before the eyes of an admiring audience, fifty models flaunted in haute couture outfits, and more than 200 thousand spectators watched them … Origami skirts and pagoda dresses, egg laying, shells, glitter and furor.
Quite in the tradition of the old school, Kabakov completed his fashion report with a conclusion of a social and moral nature.
“It’s easiest to frown: in such a time of our disasters … a time … again a feast during a plague … Well, okay. We live badly, very badly. But we are people! And to a person, even if he is hungry, beauty gives hope that life can become better. If poverty and disorder did not need beauty, our ancestors, who also did not live very well, would not have built everything that is on this square and would not have called it Red. For politics, a frontal place would be enough, ”he reasoned.
However, even if Cardin had not come, he would still be “ours”, because we mastered and fell in love with him long before Raisa Maksimovna in her impeccable tweed pair (and the style of the first lady did not go unnoticed by the French gentleman).
But after all, as the Dune group sang on the eve of the collapse of the USSR, foreshadowing the firm-cooperative period of fashion, when the avant-garde was built directly from cardboard boxes:
“Hugs are captured again, / My boyfriend is Pierre Cardin, / And two servants – a brunette and a brown-haired man. / My houses are growing, the Klima is flowing like a river, / There are darkness of partners, the company is walking.
We loved Cardin, and Dior, and Gucci, and Versace. And so they rethought it.
The author is a literary critic, columnist for Izvestia
The position of the editors may not coincide with the opinion of the author
