Creative Date Week 1- Pierre Cardin's Future Fashion at Brooklyn Museum

Two years ago, I signed up for a fashion design program outside my work, which my father used to against my choice and thought I was spending my time on meaningless stuffs. But to me, it was an important moment that first time I had courage to study something in a design school.

In the first day of our fashion design class, we are assigned to research styles across ages between 20s, 50s and 60s, and we need to select a period that we are most interested in and come up with a set of design that inspired by the fashion at that point of time. After some basic research, I was fascinated by the 60s design where geometric shapes are heavily used, and the simplicity of the lines and curves make the design more future orientated. There is a huge fashion transformation from 50s to 60s especially in women's clothes, where the emphasis of the design is no longer focusing on the conventional body shape of women. Pierre Cardin is indeed the driving force of the this transformation. He has a forward looking mindset in design and his focus is more on unisex and outer space. So my first fashion design set was completely inspired by his works during 60s.

I went Brooklyn museum as part of the explore NYC program organized by the New School, so it was actually a surprise for me to find the Pierre Cardin's Future Fashion exhibition there. It is interesting to find out that how Cardin had spent years experimenting his ideas in different parts of the world, how he use reflective materials and lights to create dynamic and kinetic effect, and how he had been dazzled about night sky and space exploration. His creations are not only limited to fashion, but also in furniture and architecture. He designed the Palais Bulles, which is a series of bubble shaped houses located in the South of France. Cardin expanded his future concepts in the architecture as well, it become a very distinctive space where circle motif was massively used. I am particularly interested in how he used simple geometric shapes to not only minimize the "showing off" of woman's curves, but also as a social statement for feminism and the shifting of women's status.