In this era of immigration, it would  be appropriate to remember an Italian emigrant who made history in the worlds of fashion and design in an early example of the brain drain. Thanks to his surname, Pierre Cardin, born Pietro Cardin, could easily be French were it not for the fact that he was born in the province of Treviso and in a tiny village to boot. We can only imagine what it was like being born into an Italian village in 1922 with a creative vocation and the entirety of Mussolini’s dictatorship ahead. Luckily (for him), his parents emigrated to France and if we skip forward a little we find that Pietro has become Pierre, a person able to transform anything he touches into something spellbinding. I am still convinced that there was a touch of magic in Dior’s New Look. He also worked for Schiaparelli, the great rival of Madame Coco (not to mention grandmother of Marisa Berenson, who we know as model and guest star in an episode of Murder, She Wrote), before finally becoming Pierre Cardin, one of the first stylists (the very first, if you trust Wikipedia) to open a shop in Japan. I remember models wearing Pierre Cardin on the pages of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in the 80’s when my adolescent self fantasised about being him (ok, I was a weird  teenager, the other girls wanted to be Madonna but in the long run I think I win) and the bubble house on the Côte d’Azur, how could I fail to be enchanted? Then there was the time he bought a castle that had belonged to De Sade… Anyway, the long and short of it is that missing an appointment with Pierre (yes, we’re on first name terms now) is like missing an appointment with history.