Just arrived [A Superb Pierre Cardin Dress c1968]

I am very pleased to post this amazing linen shift dress with padded stitched detailing from the Pierre Cardin 1968 collection. It is really one of the best Cardin pieces I have seen in a very long time! The color is extraordinary and it is in museum quality condition.
I find Cardin to be especially fascinating. He really is a designer that I think is both adored and overlooked. He is held in absolute esteem for pieces like this and if you think 1960s you think Cardin, but he really was so much more. Did you know for example that he worked at both Paquin and Schiaparelli at the start of his career in fashion? Or that he was an apprentice to Christian Dior and was employed at the house the year Dior unveiled the "new Look"? He started his own house in the early 1950s — long before what we think of as "Cardin" — you can see hints of what he will do later but his pieces where very structured and "fifties". In the sixties he really became bold and avant garde — using metals and hammering plates of silver as accessories and incorporating them into his designs. He was one of the designers that was fascinated with synthetic materials and incorporated them into his designs often. The early polyesters and rayon's we sometimes think of as inferior now-a-days where cutting edge fabrics in their day and he was experimenting and using them in ways no one else was. By 1954 he opened the first of his boutiques and by 1959 was presenting a ready to wear collection. This in an age when couturiers did not do this. By the late seventies he was producing high end furniture line to match his aesthetic. Pieces fetch thousands and thousands now — trust me I know from my full on mod furniture obsession that almost equals my obsession to vintage clothing.
He is just the most amazing designer and his talents transcend woman's clothing. His impact on our modern concept of the "mod" look cannot be overlooked and yet I think that as more time passes and we are constantly bombarded with the newest latest and an entire generation no longer has seen or knows the connection between the new and the original, that his impact is being overlooked. I cannot tell you how many time I have seen a design strut down a runway and seen hints and bits of an earlier Cardin design. Accessories, lighting, furniture, jewels, even car interiors — the man did it all and his aesthetic still runs through the design of all those things today!
I took the time to download the official history from the Pierre Cardin website. It is absolutely amazing what he has accomplished. Take an hour one day, google Cardin and really get an idea of the scope of what he has contributed to our world. His impact on design that now make up and have become part of our every day lives cannot be underestimated!
Huge, huge, HUGE fan! He is on my "if you can go to dinner with anyone dead or alive" list... though I am sure I would exhaust the poor man in mere moments with my unabashed adoration! He is 89 and still active so a girl can only hope and send off a prayer to the vintage gods... ..