Fashion Designer Pierre Cardin Builds a Village. To find Pierre Cardin, I had to visit a construction site in the tiny village of Lacoste in Provence. The legendary fashion designer has purchased a vast array of buildings there over the past decade, and, the locals advised me, he was taking a hands- on approach to their reconstruction. His acquisitions now number more than 4.
Marquis de Sade. So one sunny morning the summer before last, I strolled down a cobbled laneway, the Rue Basse, peering into doorways and windows, observing that the charming stone facades of the village now concealed spartan modern interiors. Sure enough, inside one crumbling edifice supported by metal poles and billowing with dust, I found Monsieur Cardin at work. In that setting, there was no mistaking the shock of Warhol- esque white hair and signature black designer frames.
Although in his late 8. Cardin original, shaped like a giant potato chip. To my surprise, when I introduced myself as a writer interested in the Marquis de Sade, Cardin shook my hand and offered to show me around the building, which he was decorating himself as a guesthouse. Upstairs is finished!" he enthused.
Once again defying his years, he hoisted himself across a gap, hovering for a second, long enough that I felt compelled to put my arms underneath him in case he fell, then treated me to the grand tour. Each room had a different color theme—vibrantly bright orange, purple, green—and was filled with his own furniture in bold, lacquered shapes.
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The windows of the former mansion looked over the verdant Lubéron valley, across to the hilltop village of Bonnieux made famous by Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence." "But of course, Lacoste is the most beautiful village in France," Cardin said. It was hard to disagree.
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At first blush, renovating a village might seem an ambitious late- life project even for a legend of Parisian haute couture, whose career highlights include helping design the costumes for Jean Cocteau's 1. Beauty and the Beast," introducing the "bubble dress" in 1. Parisian department stores in 1. Space Age fashions worn by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the 1. As early as 1. 97. Time magazine cover story in Europe lauded his ability to leap from the world of fashion to design entire physical "environments," describing him as a "shrewd fantasist who has tacked his name onto just about anything that can be nailed, glued, baked, molded, bolted, braced, bottled, opened, shut, pushed or pulled.
He was the first fashion designer to license his name and it has appeared on everything from watches to cars, airplanes, toilet accessories, perfumes and cigarettes. Cardin has often boasted that he could live his life coming into contact with only Cardin products. There are more than 8. In that sense, re- crafting a Provençal village is hardly a stretch. I have created a world," he told me. Whether you like it or not, that's another matter!"Since his arrival in Lacoste in 2. Pierre Cardin has done his best to convert this outpost 2.
Avignon into a "Saint- Tropez of culture," opening gallery spaces, a cafe- restaurant, a grocery store and an array of renovated guesthouses and apartments that will begin taking guests this summer. The cornerstone of his vision is the annual Lacoste Festival, held every July in memory of the Marquis de Sade, who was himself a maverick of the arts. Best known today for his rabidly violent sexual tomes like "Justine" and "The 1. Days of Sodom," Sade was also a passionate theater lover, and in the early 1.
Paris. Attending one of the performances of Cardin's festival is a vivid theatrical experience. As the stars come out, so do the fashionistas from Paris and the Riviera, who stroll up the cobblestone roads and past the floodlit château.
Sade's old quarry has been converted into a spectacular amphitheater. Giant blocks of hewn stone flank the entrance like an Egyptian temple; inside, models in sheath dresses serve Maxim's champagne, Cardin's own label. The festival repertoire is unpredictable.
This year, from July 1. Carmina Burana, performed by the National Opera of Ukraine- Lviv, a modern French musical about Voltaire, an homage to the singer- songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, and a concert by Chico and the Gypsies, the group of Gipsy Kings co- founder Chico Bouchikhi. And Cardin himself is ubiquitous throughout the festival, attending rehearsals and entertaining VIPs on the sun- dappled terrace of his village boîte, the Café de Sade. Not everyone in Lacoste has been thrilled by Cardin's new vision.
His accelerating real- estate grab raised the ire of the left- leaning villagers, who had a Communist mayor for five decades after World War II. They vocally objected that his many acquisitions—Cardin often bought houses at up to triple market rate, even when they were in decay or ruins—were depopulating the village and stripping its rustic Provençal character. Accusing him of behaving like an arrogant feudal seigneur along the lines of Sade himself, many locals boycotted his cafe, boulangerie and souvenir store, all to the delight of visiting French newspaper and television reporters. By 2. 00. 9, it seemed as if a glum resignation had finally set in amongst the old Socialists. Then, at the end of that year, Cardin announced that he was creating a "sculptural golf course" in the valley below Bonnieux on over 1.
Le golf was to be organically maintained and dotted with monumental modern sculptures, to attract year- round tourist traffic. But farmers accused Cardin of robbing the Lubéron of agricultural lands. Environmentalists charged him with wasting Provence's precious water resources. Aesthetes thought the whole concept ghastly. Look at the Lubéron!" says Martha Shearer, a sculptor living in Lacoste. It's so beautiful as it is!
We don't need a golf course.") Opposition came to a head last July 1. Bastille Day—when as many as 6.
Lacoste on the festival's opening night. In a PR gesture worthy of José Bové, the farmer who famously dismantled a Mc. Donald's restaurant in southern France in 1. Cardin had commissioned, "Casanova." Cardin sallied forth to meet the protesters, and vowed to hear their objections the next day if the show was allowed to proceed. He then agreed to cancel le golf. Today, the ongoing struggle between feisty villagers and a multimillionaire is fascinating to behold.
Lacoste is the last extant gentrification process in Provence," says Bradbury Kuett, an American writer who has lived in Provence for 1. The rest of Provence was already gentrified in the 1.
It's now little more than a bourgeois theme park. But it's all still in process in Lacoste. There's a tension and an energy there that you just don't get in more famous places like Gordes."Most Americans might assume that Cardin, who turns 8. July 2, has been resting on his fashion laurels and the huge income from his licenses, but in France, he maintains a high profile as a patron of the arts, at least amongst an older generation of connoisseurs.
The major remodel of Lacoste is one small part of his busy program. In Paris, he produces shows at the Espace Pierre Cardin, a theater complex near the Champs- Elysées. Cabaret is performed at Maxim's de Paris, the venerable belle époque restaurant Cardin purchased in 1. Art Nouveau Museum upstairs. In Venice, where Cardin was born, he owns Ca'Brigadin, a sumptuous palazzo for performance auditions that was, coincidentally, the home of another infamous 1.
Giacomo Casanova. Cardin has begun his own literary prize, the Casanova Award. The old iconoclast has never accepted boundaries. People criticize me because I do everything," he says. I don't understand why I should limit myself to design. It's ridiculous!" To learn the latest twists in the saga of Lacoste, I met Cardin again—this time in Paris.
Since the 1. 96. 0s, his main office has overlooked the Elysée Palace, the president's residence, on the swank Rue du Faubourg Saint- Honoré. In this inner sanctum, Cardin is at the center of a whirlwind of activity. A Russian TV crew is packing up; Greek TV is about to arrive. Our meeting is interrupted when he has to pop out for 1. Brazilians." He is about to head to São Paulo for a week, he explains, to show off his new line and an array of vintage outfits. Visits to Azerbaijan and China are in the works.
Cardin clearly relishes the attention. The conversation leaps from one continent to the next. Then we settle down to discuss the village. Lacoste is an authentic place, because it hasn't been transformed by modern times," he says. Now I have hotels there, I have apartments, I have four châteaux.
In 1. 0 years, I've transformed the village!" When I bring up his setback with the "sculptural golf course," he swats the memory away. I was disgusted," he says.
So I said, fine, if you don't want it, I'll go somewhere else! I have other projects!" To illustrate, he hands me a lavish prospectus for an almost 1,0. Palais Lumière, the Light Palace, which he plans to build outside Venice.
It appears more in the style of Dubai than Italy: Triple glass towers are linked by six giant discs and contain 1,2. It is surrounded by rotund maisons champignons, "mushroom houses," of Cardin's design, and fitted, of course, with sleek Cardin furniture (which he prefers to call "utilitarian sculptures").
Even the people in the drawings are wearing futuristic Cardin clothes. Downstairs, I realize that Cardin owns much of the real estate around the palace and has turned it into his stores. Most prominent is the Pierre Cardin fashion boutique on the Rue du Faubourg Saint- Honoré. Cardin has never stopped designing clothes for private clients, and last fall, he showed his first line in a decade at Fashion Week in Paris and New York. The boutique is almost empty, but an attendant named Jean confides that Prince recently bought up a lot and Lady Gaga wore Cardin in a 2. The next afternoon, I'm back in Lacoste, in the same renovated mansion on the Rue Basse where I first met Cardin two years ago.