Pierre Cardin is looking to extend its licensing empire.
On Wednesday, the 76-year-old brand launches a dual-purpose site in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, serving as a showroom to attract potential licensees as well as a store for the public to shop the collection.
“I would like to boost our network of licensees in the U.S.,” said Rodrigo Basilicati-Cardin, designer and president of Pierre Cardin, and the great nephew of the late French designer Pierre Cardin, in an interview with WWD.
Partners and sales teams will be able to see what Pierre Cardin stands for at the new location, where there will be a curated edit of the brand’s offerings, including eyewear, ties, handbags, fragrance, 3D-printed T-shirts, and a small couture line. The larger goal is to bring new manufacturers on board as long-term licensing partners. The SoHo site marks the first time Pierre Cardin has had a showroom in the U.S. in many years. In the ’80s, Cardin opened a corporate office at 53 East 57th Street in New York City, which served as a showroom and for managing the licensing business in the U.S.
The new site will facilitate licensing efforts by providing a central place where Cardin executives, in particular Matthew Gonder, Cardin’s U.S. and Canada licensing agent, can regularly meet with suppliers, eliminating much of the need for Cardin officials to travel as much as they did to meet with manufacturers.
Pierre Cardin already has about two dozen licenses producing approximately 800 different items, Basilicati-Cardin said. He’s looking to broaden the scope of the business, which generated about 600 million euros last year, by introducing a variety of categories not previously produced, such as furniture, jeans, lifestyle athleisure wear and certain accessories.
The Cardin officials consider the launch in SoHo a turning point for the brand in North America. Six new licenses have just been signed across men’s, activewear, shoes, accessories, sportswear and leisurewear, alongside a new international fragrance license, the company said. “The House has 130 active licenses worldwide, and the ambition is to take Pierre Cardin beyond the heights it reached in North America in the 1970s,” Basilicati-Cardin said.
Pierre Cardin, who died in 2020 at 98, was a pioneer in licensing. It’s still central to the brand’s business model, though Cardin designs and produces in-house a couture collection twice a year, and some accessories.
“It was the idea of my uncle originally to not design super high-priced luxury. He said that the real potential for business is for medium-priced design — to design for everyone,” Basilicati-Cardin said.
Pierre Cardin also has a very limited retail business. It operates a boutique in Paris at 59 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. There are no other Pierre Cardin stores aside from a licensed outlet store in Tsawwassen Mills in British Columbia, Canada. Many years ago, there were licensed stores in the U.S.
There are no plans for additional stores in the U.S. Pierre Cardin merchandise can be found online in the U.S. on Amazon, but does not otherwise wholesale in the U.S.
Pierre Cardin is credited for originating the “Space Age” aesthetic in the 1960s. At the Pierre Cardin spring 2027 show, held earlier this month at a skating rink in Paris, technicity was top of mind, as Basilicati-Cardin brought in learnings gleaned from working with the European Space Agency to design suits astronauts use for training in preparation for future moon missions. Some of the solutions Basilicati-Cardin found for that were adopted for use on Earth.