Pierre Cardin

Cardin trained at Paquin and Dior before striking out alone, and spent the 1950s and ’60s inventing the future on schedule: the 1954 bubble dress, the 1964 Cosmocorps collection of tunics and vinyl, target motifs and cut-out shifts that dressed the Space Age before NASA reached the moon. He was also fashion’s great democratizer — an early champion of designer ready-to-wear, briefly expelled from the couture syndicate for selling to department stores, and vindicated by the entire industry following him.

His licensing empire put the Cardin name on everything from pens to aircraft interiors, a business model as influential as any silhouette, and his Palais Bulles on the Côte d’Azur remains architecture’s strangest fashion monument. Under Basilicati-Cardin the house continues to show, mining an archive whose futurism keeps coming back into style.