The End of the Affair
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Pierre Cardin, the veteran French designer, is selling his couture empire, blaming disillusionment with the fashion industry and his advancing years for his decision to step down after more than 60 years at the helm.
Mr. Cardin, 82, who built up his business from scratch and whose companies sell everything from suits to champagne, said that he wants to devote himself to supporting the arts.
He is looking for a buyer for his haute couture business, which carries a price tag of $500 million. He then plans to sell his Maxims brand, which he built up around the famous Parisian restaurant that includes hotels, food shops, and boats on the River Seine. About 800 connected product lines will also be sold, raising another $500 million.
“I have reached an age where I want to do something different,” said Mr. Cardin. “After a career lasting nearly 65 years, I feel it’s time to turn the page and devote myself fully to what I love, which is the arts and cultural charity. I’m a couturier above all, and will always be known for that, but I’m older and wiser. Nowadays, it’s the theater, cinema, exhibitions, and festivals that fire the passion in me.”
On a more pragmatic note, he added: “Besides, I am coming to the end of my life, and if I don’t sell the business, then my family will have to do it when I’m gone.” Mr. Cardin said that another reason for the sale was his disenchantment with the modern fashion world. “I don’t do my collections in France now. Only abroad or to selected private clients. What’s the point? I presented one collection at 3 p.m., and three hours later, the designs had been copied from photographs and the television and were being sold to people who would copy them.”
He is equally unimpressed with the supermodel culture. “I have never used the Christies [Turlington] or Claudias [Schiffer] of this world. As far as I’m concerned, the models are less important than the designs. I don’t understand why they are famous. What do they do except wear someone else’s clothes?” he said.
Mr. Cardin, who was born in Italy but moved to France when he was 2, became famous for his “bubble dress” in the 1950s.
He boasts that he never borrowed a single franc for his empire, which spans nearly 100 countries and employs more than 200,000 people.
Until now, he has had total control of his company, which he owns 100%.
“I built it up from nothing by working hard and putting the money back into the business. There was the mad time in the late 1950s and 1960s, when I was being paid 1 million francs in every country I presented my collection. It was a crazy time and I made a fortune.”
During that period, Mr. Cardin created an uproar by becoming the first designer to launch a ready-to-wear collection in a Paris department store.
Until then, high fashion had been the domain of a privileged few. By contrast, Mr. Cardin’s crusade to bring snappy suits to the masses led him to sell licenses for his name to be used on other products including food and furniture.
He was also the first couturier to open stores all over the world, including Japan, China and Russia, and to establish “brand licenses.”
The diversity of his products led some fashion observers to claim that Mr. Cardin, who runs his empire from Paris, devalued his own name.
Among them is Caroline Rennolds Milbank, a fashion writer, who wrote in her book “Couture”: “Today, Cardin’s diversification overshadows his work in couture. His current reputation rests more on the variety of his endeavors – as well as on his undaunted efforts to dress every human being in the world.”
Even as he prepares to leave fashion, it is a criticism that Mr. Cardin refuses to accept.
“Why shouldn’t ordinary people be able to buy my goods? When I launched the very first pret-a-porter collection, I was absolutely lambasted,” he said. “It was seen as a provocation by the world of haute couture, which at the time was a rich person’s club. It was considered some kind of dishonor. But if you are working as an ordinary secretary, why shouldn’t you have the right to buy my things?”
Not many secretaries could afford the jackets in Mr. Cardin’s Paris boutique and headquarters overlooking the Elysee presidential palace. Since 1992, when he was elected to the prestigious Academie Francaise, the organization that safeguards French culture, Mr. Cardin has concentrated increasingly on the “beaux-arts.”
The money from the sale of his business will finance new arts projects, he said, although he stressed his determination to ensure that the buyers of his company were capable of protecting his fashion legacy and those who worked for him.
“I’m looking for good buyers because I do not want my group to fall into the hands of the money men. I want it to go to textile-industry professionals. I want good buyers for the sake of the people who have loyally worked for me and sell my products who I respect enormously.”
Mr. Cardin conceded, however, that despite his retreat from fashion, his life was unlikely to become less hectic.
“I shall never retire. I certainly don’t need the money, but it’s working and being creative that keeps me going, it’s my drug. But many of my friends and colleagues in the fashion world are now dead, and after so many years in the business, I feel I have seen it all.”