Pierre Cardin museum to open in Venice palazzo

A Pierre Cardin museum is scheduled to open on September 13 at Palazzo Bragadin in Venice, displaying around 130 outfits from the late designer's career.

A costume ball on Thursday evening at Cardin's former Venetian home was planned to help launch the museum. Cardin bought the palazzo in 1981 and used it as a retreat.

Cardin, the Italian-born French couturier, died in December 2020 at the age of 98. He became known for unisex, space-age designs in the 1960s, including knit minidresses, geometric patterns, cut-outs and synthetic fabrics.

Rodrigo Basilicati-Cardin, Cardin's nephew and chief executive of the label, said the palazzo offered nearly 1,000 square metres of exhibition space and was a fitting place to show the designer's work.

The museum also seeks to refocus attention on Cardin's design legacy. He later became widely associated with licensing his name to thousands of products, a strategy that made him wealthy but reduced some of the prestige around the brand.

The exhibition includes pieces ranging from 1951 to 2018. Basilicati-Cardin said his uncle treated clothing as sculpture and wanted his dresses to be recognisable from a distance.

Thursday's costume ball comes 75 years after a 1951 Venice ball that helped launch Cardin's career, when Christian Dior asked his former assistant to create costumes for the event soon after Cardin opened his own fashion house.