Pierre Cardin, the appetite to be the first Credits<

The last of a family of six children, Pierre Cardin was born on July 2, 1922 in a hamlet near Venice. His parents, farmers precipitated into misery by the First World War, emigrated near Saint-Etienne where the father found a job in an armament factory. They will obtain French nationality in 1936.

As a child, her favorite game was to dress the dolls in the blue and pink tulle of the neighbors who work in textiles. Pierre has a passion for fabrics. He already knows that he will be a fashion designer and that Paris will be his springboard.

>> To watch, "Pierre Cardin, the claw of modernity" Isabelle Szumny's documentary:

But war breaks out and the north is occupied. The teenager is still trying to reach the capital by bike. He will have to stop in Vichy where he is engaged in the most chic store in town, just opposite the residence where the government has settled. He learns hems and buttonholes with an old little hand from Chanel.

In 1943, he escaped compulsory labor in Germany by finding a place in the treasury of the Red Cross. He did not study, does not know anything about numbers and accounting, but this apprenticeship will allow him to be the only fashion designer to be able to manage his own brand himself.

Because Pierre Cardin, to whom a clairvoyant had predicted that he would have everything, will be a few decades later at the head of an empire.