To Pierre Cardin, ‘Crazy’ Means He’s Off on Another Big Venture
He says his friends called him crazy when he went into ready-to-wear. They called him crazy when he added menswear to his lineup. They called him crazy when he fell into the restaurant business.
“In any case, I’m always crazy,” Pierre Cardin said with a grin.
More to the point, he says he was “a little bit drunk” the night he went to dinner with the former owner of Maxim’s in Paris. Suffering from a cold, Cardin recalled that he fortified himself with an entire bottle of champagne rather than cancel the engagement.
And when Maxim’s Louis Vaudable asked Cardin what he would do if he owned the restaurant, the designer euphorically rattled off a wondrous list: There would be caviar, champagne, whiskey, perfume, flowers, evening clothes--restaurants all over the world, all bearing the “magic” Maxim’s name.
The following day, realizing he had talked himself into 50% ownership (he later became sole owner), Cardin momentarily had to agree with his friends.
“I said I was crazy. I asked myself: ‘Why did I go to the dinner party?’ I had enough to do with my Pierre Cardin name. But now I’m glad.”
In Los Angeles recently, before the gala opening of the Maxim’s de Paris hotel in Palm Springs, Cardin was dressed head-to-toe in Pierre Cardin.
“I’m my own publicity,” he said as he showed off his “desert colors.”
His silk-and-wool suit was a delicate mustard shade. His cotton shirt, muted pastels. His wool tie was covered in tiny waves of violet and burnished gold.
“Two ties for the price of one,” he laughed as he flipped the cravat over to reveal a striped pattern on the reverse side.
The violet corner of a silk pocket handkerchief peeked out from his breast pocket (the inside breast pocket held a little pink-and-white plastic Pierre Cardin pen). On his feet were mustard leather slip-ons and dark green socks with discreet gold striping. His socks, he mentioned, looking down at them thoughtfully, would have been white had he not forgotten the white ones in Paris.
In the French capital, he had also left behind an important Russian ballerina (Maia Plissetskaia, who was there to dance in his multipurpose arts complex), plus all the last-minute arrangements for the upcoming opening of what he considers his very own Maxim’s hotel--a 50-suite establishment on Avenue Gabriel in Paris.
(“Mr. Pratt’s hotel,” as he calls the Palm Springs edifice--a joint venture between the Pratt Hotel Corp. and the Edward J. DeBartolo Corp.--is a licensing agreement.)
Despite all the Maxim’s projects--including a cruise ship that goes into operation later this year--fashion remains his main concern.
“I’m not so stupid as to destroy the goose that lays the golden egg. I still do the collections twice a year. Again last time, it was a fantastic success. To be in fashion for such a long time--36 years--and still be on the front page is almost impossible.”
Even before Cardin owned Maxim’s, he was described by Time magazine as a man whose name could be “worn, walked on, slept in, sat upon, munched, drunk, flown, pedaled or driven in 69 countries.” He calculates that he now “indirectly” employs 160,000 people around the world. Annual sales volume, he says, totals more than $1 billion.
Such hefty figures might lead a lesser man to toast himself nightly at Maxim’s. But not Cardin.
“I don’t like to go every day. It’s a very special place to me. I like to get prepared. I like to be in the mood. Maxim’s is not just the food. The food is good, of course, but it’s not exactly the point of going. You like to be with friends, but you don’t just call your friends and say: ‘Let’s go to Maxim’s tonight.’ The men are always in ties and dark suits, and the women mostly wear cocktail dresses. It’s a respect not for Maxim’s. It’s a respect for you. If you don’t want to dress like that, you go some other place.”
He has been criticized for opening a Maxim’s in Peking, where few can afford such luxury. Special touches include imported French chefs turning out imported foods.
“But it is a city of 1 million,” Cardin reasoned. “It is impossible to receive 1 million people in a restaurant.” And downstairs, he noted, he has opened Minim’s, where an entire meal can be had for the equivalent of one dollar.
The famous designer-entrepreneur said he is not sure what “crazy” thing he will do next. He doesn’t go looking for projects, they come looking for him, he explained, holding up a letter from a prestigious American university asking him to lend his support to a medical program.
Thinking About It
He is thinking the proposal over, he explained, adding that he never set out to be rich. Whatever he has done, has been done “for the challenge.”
He is “like a young man, starting some new project every day,” piped up his aide, Didier Heye. Suddenly the two remember Prestige, a new line of clothing that will arrive in America later this year. (It will be imported, not licensed, and will fall, in status, somewhere between haute couture and ready-to-wear with prices ranging from $800 to $1,500.)
And does Cardin, at 63, feel young?
“Yes, I do,’ he responded with a gentle laugh. “I don’t look it, but I feel it.”
