Pierre Cardin, Brooklyn Museum

My grandmother loved fashion. Perhaps a woman of her generation but she always dressed up.  I think of her whenever I am not sure what the dress code is.  She would say “better overdressed than underdressed”.  Not a bad mantra to live by.

In 8th grade, I convinced her to buy me a turtleneck with a small gold Pierre Cardin logo on the right bottom corner that folded under my neck.  I felt so chic.  

There is a retrospective of his work at the Brooklyn Museum that opened this summer and it was on the top of my list to see the first weekend back in the city. 

He is 97 years old. Started out as a tailor at 15, ending up in the accounting department when he was drafted into the war. It served him quite well. His brilliant modern thoughts changed everything in his industry. He was the first to license his name which gave him the opportunity to buy Maxims, dabble in furniture and explore many other avenues. He was also the first design label to do ready to wear. Why not make money by knocking off your own products?

He was a first for so many things including the first designer to go to India, Japan and Russia. Even designing gender neutral clothing that inspired Star Trek and the Jetsons clothing

The show is definitely worth seeing but I agree with the woman I overheard on the way out. I wanted more. In Paris, the shows around designers are tremendous. The Christian Dior show at Museum Decoratifs in Paris took hours to go through and so did the YSL show at Petit Palais. Pierre Cardin deserved more and so do the patrons.