Pierre Cardin, the French couturier who pioneered the designer licensing business by putting his name not just on ready-to-wear clothes but also on sunglasses, luggage, carpets and kitchen appliances, has died. Trained in the Paris workrooms of Christian Dior, Elsa Schiaparelli and Jeanne Paquin, Cardin opened his own salon in 1950. He didn’t invent designer licensing. Cardin’s licensing business grew to include some 800 agreements in the 1980s. “That’s pure to-do-what-I-want-with cash.”By the 1990s, the designer licensing phenomenon had tarnished the image of many of the biggest names in fashion, Cardin among them.

Source: Los Angeles Times December 29, 2020 12:56 UTC