French fashion designer Pierre Cardin was born Pietro Cardin in Treviso, Italy on July 2, 1922. His parents were wealthy landowners who, in 1924, left Italy to escape fascism and settled in France.
He was educated in central France and, at the age of 14, began as a clothier’s apprentice. At 17 he left home to work for a tailor. There he started to make suits for women. During WWII, he worked for the Red Cross, helping with the humanitarian activities that continue to this day.
Cardin moved to Paris in 1945 and worked there until he became the head of Christine Dior’s tailleure atelier in 1947. Cardin founded his own house in 1950. He made his name when he designed 30 costumes for “the party of the century,” a masquerade ball at Palazzo Labia in Venice in 1951. He started his haute couture in 1953.