Pierre Cardin, Manner Designer of the Place Age, Dies at 98

PARIS—Pierre Cardin, the designer whose Room Age apparel made him a progenitor of avant-garde style and who later on earned a fortune—and criticism—licensing his name to hundreds of mass-marketplace merchandise, died Tuesday in the French capital area. He was 98 several years old.

France’s Academy of Great Arts, which introduced his dying, explained his family members didn’t disclose a trigger.

Encouraged by the jet age, Mr. Cardin’s futuristic silhouettes and use of experimental supplies propelled him into the community consciousness in the 1960s, modifying how persons imagined the upcoming. His types of the era showcased ellipses and circles, dresses designed from vinyl and accessories molded of plexiglass. In an early ’60s episode of the Place Age cartoon “The Jetsons,” one character describes her gown as a “Pierre Martian first.”

“I was extremely motivated by the satellites, by the moon, by the full cosmos, by astronauts,” Mr. Cardin claimed in 2010. “My first patterns have been based mostly on the moon.”

Mr. Cardin shook up the style business more than much more than seven many years of do the job. He turned a single of the initially French couturiers to market ready-to-don versions of his types and pioneered the use of licensing. Commencing in the 1970s, he began to provide the legal rights to his name commonly, on almost everything from sun shades and fragrance to autos and kitchen appliances. Mr. Cardin once said he would license his identify for a roll of bathroom paper if provided the possibility.