Venice’s sinking future was top of mind at the Pierre Cardin show.
With glaciers melting and seas rising, the historic city could be underwater in the coming decades — a looming reality that served as the backdrop for the runway show. Models walked against an AI-generated background of a glass-walled city kept habitable with giant water filters, an idea cooked up by trained engineer and now brand chief executive officer Rodrigo Basilicati-Cardin.
But Venice was also on his mind for a happier reason. On Sept. 3, he will open a museum dedicated to the brand in his uncle’s former residence on the island, where a 29-year-old Pierre Cardin lived while designing costumes for the legendary Beistegui Ball — aka “The Ball of the Century.”
As a nod to the city, Venice served as the inspiration for the collection, which was largely a series of capes — short and opera-length — in a variety of patterns. Another notable element was a series of Venetian tricorn carnival hats. As much as the accessory worked for Jonathan Anderson in his debut Dior collection, it worked here too.
As with recent Cardin collections, now designed by Basilicati-Cardin, the founder’s nephew, there were a few pieces — notably a chocolate-brown fuzzy cape with subtle sparkle and an oversized bow, a bias-cut houndstooth look with contrasting pockets, and a hooded neoprene number — that could find success beyond the brand’s flagship.
But the brand’s hundreds of licensees largely design and produce their own collections, which tend to be more traditional and commercial. Basilicati-Cardin said he is working with those partners to incorporate more of the house’s design codes, such as open, curved jacket vents on blazers and other small visual cues “to make Pierre Cardin more recognizable,” he said — a shift he expects will take about three years.
The atelier itself is slowly expanding through the brand’s annual design competition, with some young designers staying on after their prize tenure ends. With this new talent, Basilicati-Cardin hopes to “better control our licenses” and create those stronger global house codes.
Thus in the collection it was almost a game to guess which pieces were designed by students because they stood out from the more overt Space Age designs, or at least referenced them with more subtlety. Then again, there are loyalists who attended the show dressed head-to-toe in Cardin’s retro-futuristic aesthetic, proving there is a market — one Basilicati-Cardin expects to deliver growth as the house’s design language becomes more clearly defined.
He plans to open a stand-alone store and showroom in New York’s SoHo on Sept. 25.
“That’s important, because I would like to look for new licensees for the U.S., for men’s and women’s clothing, bags and luggage,” he said.
Basilicati-Cardin added that he is currently involved in a design project with an undisclosed luxury hotel company.
The Venice museum will open with a masked ball on Sept. 3, to mark the 75th anniversary of the Beistegui Ball.