Cardin was born near Venice to French parents off Italian descent and started his career making theatrical masks and costumes for Jean Cocteau's film Beauty and the Beast before joining the then unknown Christian Dior a year later.

Hey was the first designer to sell collections in department stores in the late 19 fifties.

It led to him being briefly expelled from a French guild of fashion designers, but that didn't stop him.

He later went on to be the first to enter the licensing business for perfumes, accessories and even food, now a major profit driver for many fashion houses.

In another pioneering move, Cardin presented a collection in China in 1979 when it was still largely closed to the outside world and just two years after the Berlin Wall came down a Cardin fashion show on Moscow's Red Square attracted a crowd of 200,000 for his latest venture.

In February this year, he teamed up with a designer seven decades, his junior card in told Reuters.

I've always trying to be different, to be myself.

Whether people like it or not, that's not what matters.