Pierre Cardin and I

Saturday, July 2, 2022

Some years ago, I used to work for the designer Pierre Cardin, and he made me the “point” man in his affairs in the United States.  I was a very young “21,” and this was my first earnest job.  I met Cardin at the Philippines Embassy in Los Angeles, where they threw a party for him for his redesign of the Barong Tagalog, which is their national costume.  President Ferdinand Marcos was a massive fan of Cardin’s work and commissioned him to carry out the redesign.  I was fortunate enough to be there because, at the time, I was in a romantic relationship with a girl from the Philippines, and due to her work at the Embassy, she invited me as well.  Sadly, the relationship didn’t last, but she did a huge favor for me by introducing me to Pierre Cardin.

Cardin was amused at the time because I wore a red shirt with a black suit, and he told me that my look was totally wrong for the reception at the Embassy.  He was correct at the time because when I looked around, all the men there were wearing tuxedos.  The women, on the other hand, were wearing his clothes.  The President and his wife appeared to have hired him to dress all the women who came to the embassy for this party.  It may have been a publicity event more than anything else, but as usual, I jumped into the fire without checking how hot it was in the first place.  I think most people in my position would run out of the building or be embarrassed at the very least -, but I just shrugged my shoulders at him.  He found that funny, and he gave me his card to contact him if I cared to work for him.

I called him, and he told me he would send me a ticket to Nice, France, for a meeting.  Once I made it to the airport, his driver picked me up and took me somewhere that wasn’t far from the beautiful beaches of southern France.   What I didn’t expect to see was his home.  It was very “Cardin.” I had heard and seen his clothes design and knew he was obsessed with bubble shapes, but I was not prepared to see his home as a series of large bubbles.   The home is massive, and it was designed (with Cardin, of course) by Antti Lovag.  Every single room in the estate, including even the many closets) is round.  It made me dizzy to walk through one room after another.
On the other hand, Cardin is a very nice guy.  He offered me a job to serve as his assistant in the States.   I also made him laugh because I wore the same clothes I wore for the party at the Embassy.   I said yes to the job and flew back to Los Angeles the next day.

The oddest thing that happened in my new job as his assistant was being approached by Murry Wilson, the manager of The Beach Boys and the father of the Wilson brothers.  He wanted Cardin to design matching outfits for the band, which was strange because, at this time, it seemed they were running away from ‘any’ uniformed look - and I couldn’t imagine The Beach Boys wearing Cardin on stage or anywhere else for that matter. Nevertheless, I did convey the news to Cardin, and surprise, surprise, he was interested in the job.  Cardin never met Wilson nor talked to him directly - that was my job.  At first, the meetings I had with Wilson were slightly amusing, but it became a horror show as time dragged on.   At times, I wasn’t sure if he represented the boys (at this point and time, they were men, I thought they should have changed their name to “The Beach Men.”) Nevertheless, Cardin faxed me the drawings of his outfits for the band, and regularly I would go to Murry’s office on Ivar, not far from the iconic Capitol Records building to show him the latest images from the master.  This went on for a whole year, where I would be in contact with Wilson, but I could never get a commitment out of him.   I finally told Cardin that I think Murry will never commit to any of the designs, and on top of that, I wasn’t sure that he even represented the band anymore.   I think this amused Cardin, and I don’t even know if he heard a Beach Boys record.  His taste in music was more in line with Line Renaud, a French cabaret star, that he was sponsoring for a series of dinner shows at Maxims, which he purchased around the time when I had the series of meetings with The Beach Boys’ dad.

The last time I saw Cardin was when he invited me (and sent me a plane ticket, of course) to one of his new homes, a castle that the Marquis de Sade once inhabited.  I was there for a week when he called me to his office, once de Sade’s bedroom, to tell me that he had to let me go.  I didn’t even ask why, but I was just grateful for being employed and associated with Cardin.   We shook hands, and I left for the airport the next day.  Once in a while, I get a card from him. I attempted to get him to send an e-mail, but he can’t or won’t deal with that part of the world.   As for Murry Wilson, I purchased his one and only album, “The Many Moods of Murry Wilson, ” which I found to be a very depressing listening experience.