Paris Fashion Week | An aquaspace dive with Pierre Cardin

(Paris) The Pierre Cardin house presented Monday in Paris a retrofuturist collection, made of object dresses to survive both in space and in the ocean, a theme which inspired this fashion show imagined by the designer’s great-nephew, an engineer fascinated by space who took the reins of the empire.

Eight men’s models, 58 women’s models present a futuristic line, with small balls attached to the body or storage boxes on the leg of the pants.

The silhouettes, faithful to the 1960s pop and avant-garde aesthetic of the Cardin house, are very structured, with thick fabric, such as neoprene, which forms sculptures around the body and the colors, from fluorescent to neon.

A fuchsia dress has a metallic inlay on the stomach, and another has wings that give the wearer the false appearance of a manta ray.

Fifty-three dresses were made with “offcuts of fabric recovered for solar protection from satellites”, explains to AFP the creative director and studio Cardin and designated successor to the empire of the designer who died in 2020.

In the 1960s, Cardin, but also Rabanne and especially Courrèges, had launched the fashion of the “future age”, with outfits inspired by literary or cinematographic fiction, à la Star Trek.

The parade was organized at the Atelier des Lumières, a digital art center in Paris, immersing the public in immersive films of baby turtles, dolphins and other aquatic fauna.

“My dream is to make suits for the human body that will solve the problem of thermal regulation,” said Rodrigo Basilicati-Cardin during a meeting before the parade.

“Like a little autonomous ship,” he adds, in a strong Italian accent.

The great-nephew of the designer who died in 2020 is an engineer and father, with a strong taste for science and space research.

He took the reins of the Pierre Cardin “studio”, a quartet of designers who develop each collection of the luxury empire, which relies on around a thousand franchises and licenses around the world, a role of successor contested by the rest of the family in court.