The legendary French company, known as one of the most productive in terms of licensing since the 1960s—the name has been stamped on furniture, table art, and even mineral water—put on a spectacle worthy of its colossal past.
This season's collection was unveiled in front of a backdrop of large digital displays in Paris's Atelier des Lumières, a 3,000-square-meter exhibition space dedicated to digital art. The panels unfurled against a hazy white filament like the Milky Way before unveiling the show's conductive line: the ocean. Dolphins, sea animals of all types (sharks, pufferfish, anglerfish, oh my!), and coral reefs surrounded visitors, including Amandine Petit, Miss France 2021, and Prince Carlo of Bourbon-Two Sicilies.
While Rodrigo Basilicati-Cardin, the house's designer since 2022 and the late Pierre Cardin's nephew, has always taken use of his founding family member's noteworthy 'Space Age' fashion DNA, he opted to immerse his astronaut amazons in the depths of the ocean for Fall/Winter 2024. One model wore a complete black PVC suit under a blood-orange short dress trimmed with octopus-like tentacles, while another walked in a foot-length midnight-blue satin dress with a circular silver brooch in the shape of a seashell.
In another homage to Poseidon's domain, the back of one girl's thin black dress was covered with undulating, transparent lime green fins, while another's sharp-shouldered, nipped-waist jacket in waffled nacré brocade shimmered like that of an exotic fish. In terms of accessories, models donned goggle-like sunglasses and triangle-shaped purses fastened with a round Pierre Cardin emblem like a seashell. Looks also flowed onto the runway in neoprene, the iconic diver's material of choice.
An overall display that left no one feeling as if they were drowning, and presented a more emancipated picture of Basilicati-Cardin's vision for the brand now, developing from previous exhibitions that hewed too tightly to the same 'Space Age' motif. /BGNES
Pierre Cardin's astronauts of the 1960s exchange space for ocean depth
