After visiting the exposition: “Pierre Cardin: Future of Fashion” at the Brooklyn Museum, I felt as I entered another world. Pierre Cardin, born in 1922, is an Italian-french fashion designer. He is most known for his futuristic, Space Age, designs and avant-garde style. Making use of geometric shapes to construct his garments and accessories, being very experimental but not at all times practical.
“Fashion is a terrific time-travel machine”, a quote from the article “Fashion for the Future” written by Megan O’Grady, really connected with what I experienced during this exposition. Pierre Cardin was able, with his garments and extravagant accessories, to make clothes for another world. In the exposition, there is even a quote by him that says: “I preferred to image an evening dress for a world that does not exist yet. I image dresses made of crystals and flashing lights”. He imagined his clothes for a non-existing world, transporting the viewer to, for example, the world of Star Trek. One bag stood out from the exhibit, it is a triangular black-shiny bag with a circular opening so that the wearer can put their hand through. This bag, in my opinion, is not something very futuristic because the needs that this bag stands for are not the ones people nowadays are looking for. This bag is meant for women, for evening events. In the present day, usually, when a woman is going for an evening event, she does not take a huge bag, but rather a small one in which you can only fit very little things. In addition, bags, in general, are in some way practical, either the design is very comfortable for the wearer, or it has pockets, divisions, straps, and the like, but it is functional. Cardin’s bag has no functionality and utility at all (aside from being able to place things inside). It would be very uncomfortable to wear because the shape is not very practical. It would be hard to hold it because of the pointy edge at the top, so it could only be worn if someone put its arms through the opening. Clearly the main focus of the bag is the shape. It is a perfect triangle with a perfectly round opening. In this future that Cardin envisioned, the aesthetic and the shape might be the main concern of the people, abandoning completely the needs of the time when he designing the bag. Because as Susan Kaiser in “Bodies in Motion through Time and Space: Age/Generation and Place” in Fashion and Cultural Studies wrote: “Tying together how we look and how we think, time and space influence how we mind and manage our appearance”. In Cardin’s imaginary future, time and space clearly influence how he imagines the inhabitants of his world to be. 1 2 3
[1] O’Grady, Megan. 2019. “Fashions For The Future”. Nytimes.Com. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/21/t-magazine/fashion-future-history.html.
[2] Cardin, Pierre. 2019.”Pierre Cardin: Future of Fashion”. Brooklyn Museum.
[3] Kaiser, Susan B. 2012. “Bodies in Motion through Time and Space: Age/Generation and Place”. In Fashion And Cultural Studies. New York, London: Berg, 2012.
