Pierre Cardin Turns to Young Designers for a Boost – WWD

Like many designer houses, Pierre Cardin is tapping into the talents of young creatives.

The designer company staged a fashion show Wednesday at the Consulate General of France in New York City to celebrate the winner of the Pierre Cardin Young Designers Contest. Hundreds had initially offered submissions for the competition, which was held in honor of the centenary of Cardin’s birth. Organizers decided on 10 finalists, who participated in a showdown to reimagine the futuristic vision of the designer, whose 70-year career spanned a slew of categories.

Needless to say, that called for geometric patterns, Space Age-worthy accents and next-generation thinking. Students from The New School’s Parsons School of Design, the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Savannah College of Art & Design, the University of North Texas, the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, California, Otis College, Houston Community College and other institutions were in the running.

Participants weren’t asked to rehash the past — and to highlight the here-and-now, glimpses of select looks from the “Cent” haute couture show held in Venice, Italy, in July, and the “Cosmocorps 3022” collection from January of this year were shown to attendees at Wednesday night’s event.  

The designer’s 1964 “Cosmocorps” collection broke new ground by streamlining menswear without any unnecessary accents or details. Always onto the next, Cardin visited NASA’s Houston outpost in 1969. His avant-garde designs used vinyls, plastics, and the “Cardine” synthetic fabric. The designer was also a forerunner in unisex ensembles that featured multiple layers and bold jewelry. Cardin used a wide assortment of references in his creations, including Japanese origami, Chinese architecture and American football uniforms.

HyeRin Lee, a senior at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, was named the winner of the grand prize for the first annual contest. The competition was stacked, according to Rodrigo Basilicati Cardin, president of Maison Pierre Cardin and a descendant of the pioneering designer, who died at 98 in 2020.

During an interview Tuesday, Cardin said the group of finalists had been whittled down to 10 after a workshop in New York, and then he mulled over the decision overnight. Choosing the right candidate is not just a matter of selecting someone “who is of a good character or is a talented sketcher,” Cardin said. “They also have to be very quick thinking of new ideas. They have to be a worker and someone, who doesn’t care about working on Saturdays and Sundays sometimes.”

Lee’s bounty includes an all-expenses paid three-month apprenticeship at Pierre Cardin in Paris with the potential to become a full-time employee. The FIDM student will also receive $1,000 per month salary and the opportunity to have a sketch cut, sewn and made. Afterward, the designer and the company will decide together whether they want to continue at the company on a full-time basis, Cardin said. By designing shoulder-to-shoulder with the team, Lee should have a clear idea whether he wants to stay or not. Being part of the team is demanding, as 1,000 drawings are typically needed for various licenses each month, said Cardin, who is keen to have a few young designers travel to other countries to meet with licensees on a more regular basis.

Lee’s fellow finalists were Sabrina Leigh Thomas of Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, Tristan Marley Wilson of University of North Texas, Marian Magdaniel Safas of Houston Community College, Parsons students Shirley Tang and Marcelle Cooper, and SCAD’s Victoria Cooper, Isabella Song, Wenqi Sun and Lei Shang.

In addition to New York, Cardin is holding design workshops this month for the semifinalists in Houston and Dallas, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia, and other cities. During this week’s Dallas stop, the company will be honored Thursday night by the Fashion Group International’s local chapter.

Looking to hire a few young designers annually, Cardin said he hopes that they will help to fasten ties with licensees and periodically meet with them in other countries. He noted how a recent trip to Mexico City, Mexico, allowed for meetings with eight licensors to brainstorm. “We have to start another era. For 25 years, nobody kept up with them [sufficiently] on the design level. We had sent a lot of drawings to them but we need more quality control. It is very important for me to go to meet all of the different factories.”

With approximately 140 different licensors and 300 to 400 licenses in total, it is not easy to visit them every year, but a greater effort can be made, Cardin said. The plan is to have the future new hires connect with 10 or 15 licensors to inspire them and keep them up-to-speed. “You have to follow [what is happening] with the product. You have to work with them every week. Otherwise, they forget [what is required]. They start to do what they want to and the quality decreases. That has been a problem,” he said.

In the coming months, scouting trips are planned for Seoul, South Korea; Istanbul, Turkey; Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Israel; São Paulo, Brazil, and Pretoria and Johannesburg, South Africa, and Cardin hopes to get to China and Taiwan further down the road. Speaking of the importance of seeing how people work in person, Cardin said, “Maybe they have been working from home too much. You need to be able to see the spontaneous parts of how they design whether that be how they sketch, work with software or how fast they can work.”