1970s
In the first half of the 1970s, Cardin was still the most prominent menswear designer in the world, but the menswear revolution he had helped foster in the 1960s was just about over and by the mid-seventies his menswear would be more subdued. His womenswear was still in line with mainstream fashion in the earliest seventies, sometimes considered as influential as Yves Saint Laurent's,[285] but by the mid-seventies it would be somewhat out of step with mainstream women's fashion and would be considered eccentric,[286][287][288][289] though he did reflect some of the trends of the period. He continued to produce enormous fashion shows with hundreds of outfits, so there was plenty of variety to encompass a number of looks.[290] He became better known in the mid-seventies for licensing his name for all kinds of products.[291] Toward the end of the decade, he would regain some influence in womenswear as his interpretations of the big-shoulder-pads trend would coincide with what other designers were doing and bring him renewed attention.
As in the rest of the world, Cardin's reputation in the Soviet Union had grown since his first trip there in 1963, and during the seventies he would be known as the most prominent non-Soviet designer in the country, a favorite of celebrated figures in the arts and politics.[292]
By the early seventies, artistic director Andre Oliver had been given responsibility for Cardin's ready-to-wear lines,[293] specialty lines,[294][295] and for Cardin collections tailored to various national markets,[296] the clothes always adaptations of Cardin's couture collections.[297]
Though no longer groundbreaking as it had been in the early 1960s and during the Mod era of the mid-sixties, Cardin's early seventies menswear was still influential and popular,[298] characterized by high armholes, large collars, double-breasted jackets, and high closures, all of which were now widespread menswear trends that Cardin had helped establish.[299]
Cardin's early seventies womenswear continued in the direction he was headed in the late sixties: a variety of lengths; skirts consisting of slits, slashes,[300] panels,[301] strips,[302] loops, and asymmetric hems;[303] ribknit tops;[304][305] flaring sleeves;[306] capes and ponchos;[307][308]
In the year 1970, the fashion industry tried to reduce women's skirt choices to just midcalf-hemmed midi skirts.[323] Cardin showed exclusively that length in his ready-to-wear collections[324] but varied lengths in his couture collections,[325] from micromini[326] to ankle length,[327] while close friend and Cardin aficionado Jeanne Moreau intimated that Cardin felt that longer skirts tended to age women.[328]
As haute couture began to decline, ready-to-wear ('prêt-à-porter') soared as well as Cardin's designs. He was the first to combine the "mini" and the "maxi" skirts of the 1970s by introducing a new hemline that had long pom-pom panels or fringes.[329]
Beginning in the 1970s, Cardin set another new trend: "mod chic". This trend holds true for the form or for a combination of forms, which did not exist at the time. He was the first to combine extremely short and ankle-length pieces. He made dresses with slits and batwing sleeves with novel dimensions and mixed circular movement and gypsy skirts with structured tops. These creations allowed for the geometric shapes that captivated him to be contrasted, with both circular and straight lines. Cardin became an icon for starting this popular fashion movement of the early 1970s.[330]
He designed a handful of Space Age-looking nurses' uniforms in 1970 that featured skullcap- and Medieval-looking headgear and the variety of skirt lengths he was showing in his collections at the time, including ankle-length maxiskirts and loincloth-looking miniskirts worn over sometimes revealing translucent bodystockings.[331]
Inspired by space travel and exploration, Cardin visited NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) in 1970, where he tried on the original spacesuit worn by the first human to set foot on the Moon, Neil Armstrong.[332] Cardin designed spacesuits for NASA in 1970.[332]
His early seventies women's trousers were often narrow and of knit fabric and included cropped versions to wear with the popular boots of the time,[333][334][335] a period during which women were wearing knickers and gauchos for the same purpose.[336] He continued to show jumpsuits,[337][338] including some in skin-tight vinyl.[339] Other Cardin trousers of the early seventies featured unusual seaming.[340][341]
At the same time that Cardin was showing futuristic looks, he also drew from past eras[342] and presented sheath skirts and tight-bodiced tailored jackets in silhouettes from the 1950s,[343][344] though the sheath skirts differed from 1950s sheath skirts in being unlined and worn without slips or girdles, revealing the pantylines of the models' 1970s-style pantyhose and underwear.[345][346] Shown by Cardin from 1970 to 1976, these vaguely retro-looking skin-tight, unlined skirts did not catch on during the casual, liberated early seventies, when restricting women's movements in tight skirts was considered regressive, but unlined sheath skirts would find favor in the early 1980s, most famously in the work of Azzedine Alaïa, as well as in the more slouchy tube skirts put out by London designers like BodyMap in the mid-1980s.
Many up-and-coming designers apprenticed with Cardin, including Jean-Paul Gaultier in 1970.[347]
In 1971, Cardin put an emphasis on miniskirts of different cuts than he'd been showing in recent years, many split at the sides,[348] and included short shorts with them as part of that year's hot pants trend,[349] while continuing to show longer lengths as well. Bare-armed, knee-length dresses with extended cap sleeves resembling shoulder flanges were notable, a style he would show through 1973.[350] Some of his early seventies minidresses were in the form of tunics. Other tunic dresses in various lengths were shown for all hours, either alone or over trousers.[351]
HIs couture collections continued to feature geometric shapes, with clothes cut to form squares, circles, or triangles when the arms were held out to the sides.[352] In 1971, he adopted the motif of a circle at the end of a long, rectangular strip, a sort of geometric pendulum form that he would put at the ends of belts, sleeves, and pant legs.[353]
Other Cardin womenswear from 1971 was made with high, tight, constraining waistbands, some cinched, even on jeans, which was very out of step with the times.[354] Another indulgence of his that was considered anachronistic in the early to mid-seventies was big ballgowns,[355][356] which Cardin produced from 1971 onward in taffetas and other traditionally dressy fabrics.[357][358] Fellow former Space Age designer André Courrèges also iconoclastically produced big ballgowns at the time,[359] a very casual period during which women might wear jeans and t-shirts even for important events.[360][361]
He met Soviet ballerina Maya Plisetskaya in 1971 at Avignon. She would become a friend and muse, wearing his clothes and inviting him to costume multiple productions.[362]
In 1971, Cardin redesigned the barong tagalog, a national costume of the Philippines, by opening the front, removing the cuffs that needed cufflinks, flaring the sleeves, and minimizing the embroidery. It was also tapered to the body, in contrast with the traditional loose-fitting design, and it also had a thicker collar with sharp and pointed cuffs. A straight-cut design was favored by President Ferdinand Marcos.[363]
Some of Cardin's skirts starting in 1972, including miniskirts, had hoops, ranging from two or three widely separated hoops in the skirt of a minidress to multiple hoops very close together near the hem of an evening gown that moved up and down as the wearer walked. The point of these hoops seemed to be a particular kind of movement.[364] They were largely not the big, silhouette-enlarging hoops seen in the 1860s but hoops that stood out only a little from the slim lines of the skirt. Like his sheath skirts from the same time period, these never caught on among the comfort-conscious seventies public and they were confined to Cardin's runways, but he would continue to play with the idea into the 1980s, when designer Vivienne Westwood would receive attention for her wire-framed mid-eighties crinoline miniskirts.
Cardin's fashion shows, both couture and ready-to-wear, continued to contain many more garments than other designers' shows. As ready-to-wear came to outshine haute couture during the 1970s, Cardin was one of several designers who considered doing away with open couture shows entirely, nearly doing so in 1972 when he, Yves Saint Laurent, and a few others declared that they would stop presenting separate public couture shows for spring and instead show their couture lines with their ready-to-wear collections and then changed their minds.[365][366]
In 1973, Cardin's backdrop at the joint French-US fashion show held at Versailles was a spaceship, while other designers chose bucolic or nostalgic scenes.[367] He continued with some Space Age womenswear styles into 1974. By that date, the main vestiges of his Space Age looks were his jumper dresses over turtleneck-and-tights or bodystocking, a very versatile, serviceable way of dressing that fit the practical mood of the period.[368][369]
By 1973, the larger fashion industry had moved toward exclusively below-knee skirts, with calf lengths preferred. Cardin also featured skirts of that length,[370] but he would also be one of very few designers, Courrèges most notably, to carry on including miniskirts in his collections even during their mid-seventies nadir.[371][372]
In other designs, he did conform to some of the trends of the time, including more natural fibers; layering;[373][374] fuller cuts;[375][376][377] full, flounced, below-knee skirts of light fabrics;[378][379] harem pants, harem skirts, and harem tops;[380] and a variety of full trousers[381]
He put his name on a line of infants' clothes in 1975.[391]
In 1975, Cardin opened a furniture boutique on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, having earlier introduced the Environnement furniture store in 1968. In 1977, 1979, and 1983, he was awarded the Cartier Golden Thimble by French haute couture for the most creative collection of the season.[392] He was a member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture et du Prêt-à-Porter from 1953 to 1993.[393]
In 1976, Cardin's position as most influential menswear designer began to be eclipsed by Giorgio Armani, who was just becoming a name among the fashion cognoscenti.[394] Cardin's clothes by that time had followed the trends of the period and become more sedate. He was beginning to shorten his men's jackets, narrow lapels slightly, and broaden the shoulders, a direction that would continue until it became an industry trend at the end of the decade.[395][396]
Cardin's first American-made, mass-produced home furnishing collection came in 1977 when Cardin partnered with Dillingham Manufacturing Company, Scandinavian Folklore Carpets of Denmark for Ege Rya Inc., and the Laurel Lamp Company.[397]
In 1977, Cardin simplified and made more accessible the haute couture process by introducing "prêt-couture," off-the-rack hand-made clothes that customers could acquire with only one fitting and a price intermediate between his ready-to-wear and couture lines.[398][399]
For fall of 1978, much of the fashion industry moved away from voluminous, unconstructed, versatile shapes in womenswear and toward prominently padded shoulders and more tailored clothing in styles that were often derived from the 1940s, a tendency that was referred to as retro at the time. The retro emphasis included ideas of futuristic dress from the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, with Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers frequently mentioned, most famously in the work of Thierry Mugler and Claude Montana.[400] This was not the minimalistic, intellectual Space Age look influenced by modern art that had prevailed in the 1960s in the work of Cardin and others but something older, consisting of shoulder flanges and trapunto-stitched jumpsuits. Some of Cardin's work from this big-shoulders period would contribute to this retro-futuristic mode.[401] His tailoring expertise and preference for bold silhouettes fit into the renewed emphasis on structure and he received increased press attention for his clothes, his shoulders some of the broadest in Paris and his suits some of the most severely tailored.[402][403][404]
In 1979, Cardin was appointed a consultant to China's agency for trade in textiles,[405][406] and in March of that year, he became the first Western designer to present a fashion show in China in many decades.[407]
In early 1979, Cardin contributed pagoda shoulders to the fashion lexicon.[408] These may have been influenced by his increased trips to China over the previous year.[409] The look would influence other designers for fall of 1979, as many sharpened the edges of their shoulder pads and sometimes turned them up,[410] most notably Claude Montana.[411] Like Montana,[412] Cardin would present some of the largest shoulders in the industry into the mid-1980s,[413][414][415]
His women's collections continued to include the pleats[419] and asymmetric hemlines[420] that Cardin had loved for well over a decade. Particularly well received were full, knee-length tent-chemise dresses in ruffled taffeta for evening, as they were both in line with the renewed emphasis on glamor and comfortably wearable.[421][422] He would show these into the early eighties. The ballgowns and mini lengths from Cardin[423] that had been out of style in the broader fashion world for most of the seventies came back in with designers in 1979,[424] with miniskirts presented in a variety of shapes and styles, including sixties-revival looks.[425] Cardin's enormous fashion presentations encompassed a number of variable styles.
His menswear of the last two years of the seventies reached the apogee of the increased-shoulder-width direction he was already headed in the mid-seventies, with shoulders broadened with padding, narrower lapels to increase the impression of shoulder width, and tapered jacket shapes.[426][427] Cardin would present this broad-shouldered men's silhouette through much of the following decade.
