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Designer Pierre Cardin poses during the launch of the new Haute Couture collection by Pierre Cardin Paris at Maxim on November 26, 2013 in Paris.

Richard Bord | Getty Images

Pierre Cardin, who in his more than seven decades in fashion brought geometric shapes to haute couture and named everything from clothing to furniture and perfume to pens, died Tuesday. He was 98 years old.

“It is with great sadness that the members of the Academy of Fine Arts announce the death of their colleague Pierre Cardin,” tweeted the French Academy of Fine Arts.

Cardin died in a hospital in Neuilly, west of Paris, his family told Agence France-Presse.

“It’s a day of great mourning for our whole family. Pierre Cardin is no more,” the family said in a statement. “We are all proud of his tenacious ambition and the daring he has shown throughout his life.”

Cardin switched from the world of bespoke high fashion for private customers to ready-to-wear designs for the masses.

“You said Pret-a-Porter would kill your name and it saved me,” Cardin once said.

Cardin was born on July 2, 1922, the son of a wealthy wine merchant near Venice. When he was two years old, he and his family moved from fascist Italy to France.

Cardin was only 14 years old when he started as an apprentice tailor. At the age of 23 he moved to Paris, studied architecture and worked at the Paquin fashion house and later at Elsa Schiaparelli. In the French capital he met the film director Jean Cocteau and helped design masks and costumes for the 1946 film “La Belle et La Bete”.

He switched to Christian Dior in 1946 and worked as a pattern tailor on the female “New Look” fashion of the post-war period. Four years later he opened his own fashion house and designed costumes for the theater.

In 1953 he presented his first women’s collection and the following year he opened his first women’s boutique, Eve, and unveiled the Bubble dress. The garment, a loose fitting dress that gathers at the waist and hem and balloons on the thighs, has been recognized internationally. Soon his fashion was worn by such bold names as Eva Peron, Rita Hayworth, Elizabeth Taylor, Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau, Mia Farrow and Jacqueline Kennedy.

Pierre Cardin at the opening of the Musee Pierre Cardin on November 13, 2014 in Paris.

Pascal Le Segretain | Getty Images

In 1957 he traveled to Japan and was one of the first European designers to explore Asian influences. He later pioneered China to break out of its drab, militaristic Mao Zedong look.

Also in 1957, he opened another Parisian boutique, this time for men by the name of Adam, with colorful ties and printed shirts. He later made the iconic collarless suits for the Beatles and helped attract clients like Gregory Peck. Rex Harrison and Mick Jagger.

“Before me, no designer made clothes for men, only tailors,” Cardin said in an interview with Agence France-Presse in 2009. “Today, the image of designers is more focused on men than women, right or wrong. So I was right 40 or 50 years ago. “

In 1959, he shocked the fashion world by presenting a ready-to-wear show at a department store, Printemps in Paris. After the show, he was expelled from the Elite Chambre Syndicale, the French association of haute couture designers. (He was later reinstated.)

The French fashion designer Pierre Cardin opened his own fashion house in 1950.

Reg Lancaster | Getty Images

Over-the-top fashion from out of this world

With the advent of the US-Russia space race in the late 1950s and 1960s, he launched the “Cosmocorps” collection – exaggerated unisex fashions from around the world. His space age look included helmets, google, tunics and over-the-knee boots.

“My favorite piece of clothing is what I invent for a life that doesn’t yet exist, the world of tomorrow,” he said.

Or as he put it in an interview with AFP 2009: “Fashion and design are not the same. Fashion can be worn. Design can be uncomfortable and unpopular, but it’s creative. So design is the real value.”

He pioneered branding in the 1970s, giving his name to virtually everything, including automobiles – Cardin AMX Javelin from American Motors Corp. from 1971 – perfume, pens, cigarettes and even sardines. He has been called a “Branding Visionary” by the New York Times. A 2002 article found that around 800 products bearing his name were sold in more than 140 countries for $ 1 billion in annual sales.

In 1981, he bought one of Paris’ most iconic names, Maxim’s Restaurant, for more than $ 20 million.

“I’ve done everything! I even have my own water! I make perfumes, sardines. Why not? During the war, I would have rather smelled the scent of sardines than perfume. If someone had asked me to make toilet paper, I would do it. Why not? ”he said in a 2002 interview with The Times.

He loved using geometric and strange designs. He developed a fabric, cardine, to emboss abstract shapes on garments. One of his residences was the Palais Bulles (Bubble Palace), a bizarre collection of circular structures – a la “The Flintstones” meets “The Jetsons” – overlooking the Mediterranean Sea near Cannes.

In May 2003, Pierre Cardin celebrated his 80th birthday and 50 years of fashion design in his Palais Bulles.

Alain Benainous | Getty Images

He also owned and restored the castle of the Marquis de Sade in Provence, where he held concerts and opera performances. “Cardin has a perfect angle,” said Architectural Digest in a 2007 story of the restoration of the castle, which was originally built in the 15th century.

Although Cardin was gay, he had a five-year affair with Moreau, “the queen of French new wave cinema”. During the affair, according to The Hollywood Reporter, he had a relationship with longtime artistic director and life partner Andre Oliver. Oliver died in 1993.

Cardin’s fascination with space led him to NASA, where he tried on an Apollo 11 spacesuit in 1971, two years after the first moon landing. In 2019, 50 years after the first moon landing, the Brooklyn Museum hosted a Cardin retrospective. In the catalog he was asked about his vision of fashion half a century in the future:

“In 2069 we will all be walking on the moon or Mars with my ‘Cosmocorps’ ensembles. Women will wear plexiglass bell hats and tube clothing. Men will wear elliptical pants and kinetic tunics.”

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Nikola Corporation has rung the Nasdaq Closing Bell remotely from around the world.

Source: The Nasdaq

Check out the companies making headlines on Monday lunchtime:

Nikola – Shares in the electric vehicle maker rose nearly 6% after a JPMorgan analyst said he saw “less dramatic” news flow for the company in 2021. “We expect Nikola to post a video of a working Tre in January “We expect a steady flow of updates for the truck in 2021 as the test milestones are reached,” the analyst said.

Myovant Sciences – Shares rose 25% after agreeing to collaborate with Pfizer to develop prostate cancer drug Relugolix. The drug is also being studied for possible uses for women’s health.

Weibo – The stock fell more than 10% despite a better-than-expected quarterly report from the Chinese social media company. Weibo posted adjusted earnings of 66 cents per share, 6 cents above Refinitiv’s estimates. Sales were also above the analysts’ forecasts. However, some analysts pointed to the slowdown in business growth with average daily active users.

Astrazeneca – US-listed shares in the drug maker rose more than 1% after several reports said the company’s Covid vaccine, developed in partnership with Oxford University, is expected to be approved in the UK this week. The AstraZeneca shot is expected to launch next week if approved in the next few days.

Apple – The tech giant’s shares rose more than 3% on the strength of big tech. Progress comes after Apple makes its fourth straight week of profits.

Novavax – Shares fell more than 2% after the biotech company announced that its coronavirus vaccine candidate entered a phase 3 study in the United States and Mexico. “This study is a critical step in building a global portfolio of safe and effective vaccines to protect the world’s population,” said CEO Stanley Erck in a statement.

DoorDash – The food company fell 3.8% after a column in the Wall Street Journal highlighted how a new bill in California could affect delivery service. The regulation would require companies to have agreements with restaurants, potentially affecting the growth strategy for some services.

CNBC’s Pippa Stevens, Jesse Pound and Yun Li contributed to this report.

The number of shipments delivered through the country’s busiest container port complex in Los Angeles has increased significantly from the first half, driven by a recovery in business and a change in consumer habits.

Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said during an appearance on CNBC on Monday that cargo volume increased 50% in the second half of 2020 after arriving at the docks in the first six months of the year, and that loaded ships often anchor at sea waiting for a dock to open.

“It’s all the change in the American consumer,” Seroka said on Power Lunch. “We don’t buy services, we buy goods.”

The surge in shipments has put a strain on the seaport supply chain, which is managed by the Los Angeles Port Authority. It’s a stark contrast to spring, when volume plummeted as the coronavirus pandemic plunged the global economy into recession.

With retailers seeing a surge in online ordering and e-commerce in the world of stay-at-home, it has created long delays in unloading ships at ports across the country and a lack of desired storage space.

Seroka said the port expects demand to surge. The Port of Southern California has been the busiest container port in North America for the past two decades, welcoming 17% of all US cargo.

In November, the Port of Los Angeles saw 890,000 shipments, equivalent to 20 feet, passing through its facilities, up 22% from the same month last year, partly due to vacation orders. Imports from Asia are at a record level, announced the port authority. Meanwhile, exports at the port have declined in 23 of the last 25 months, partly due to trade policy with China.

“In addition to trade policy, it is the strength of the US dollar that makes our goods a bit more than would otherwise be the case for competing nations in the same product categories,” Seroka said. “And right now the most amazing statistic is that we are sending back twice as many empty boxes as we are American exports through our docks.”

Monthly cargo volumes averaged 930,000 units in 20 foot units since August, which Seroka called “unusual” at the end of the year. The activity is expected to last several months.

Seroka said the port has been focusing on digitization to streamline shipping schedules and logistics.

“The port is tense,” he said.

The lack of Covid testing capacity in the US could mean that the new, highly transmissible strain of coronavirus, which first appeared in the UK, is already making its way through communities in the US

That’s what Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, the medical director of the Special Pathogens Unit at Boston Medical Center.

“To find this strain, we need to take a percentage of the diagnosed samples and do an in-depth genetic analysis (in the) In the US, our capacity was not spectacular, “said the infectious disease doctor “The News with Shepard Smith” on Monday. “If the burden is here, we may be missing it because the holes in our net are too wide.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the new variant was not discovered in the United States

However, the agency said viruses were only sequenced from approximately 51,000 of the 17 million infections in the country. The UK recorded the most sequences with 125.00. The infections in Great Britain reached their second highest daily value on Christmas Eve. The country confirmed 39,036 new Covid-19 cases that day.

As of Monday, the US will have to provide evidence of a negative Covid-19 test from all travelers flying from the UK as concerns about the new variant of the virus grow.

Dr. Bhadelia, who is also the medical assistant for NBC News, said the measures did not go far enough.

“You can still have people who test negative, get on the plane and then come back positive. So I think testing needs to be linked to some kind of quarantine,” she said.

Japan has taken stricter measures and stopped all arrivals of foreign nationals. More than a dozen countries have reported cases of the rapidly spreading mutation, including Canada, France, South Africa, Australia, Japan, and South Korea.

Health experts in the UK and US found that while the new variant appears to be more transmissible, there is still no evidence that it is more lethal. Dr. Bhadelia warned that the results shouldn’t make people complacent when it comes to the new strain.

“The problem is that while we don’t think it increases mortality, the fact that it is more easily transmitted is also a bigger problem because the more people get infected, the more people end up in hospitals. and possibly die, “she added.