The Brooklyn Museum in New York is staging the first big Pierre Cardin retrospective in decades in an effort to help refresh a once-bold image that had faded a bit over the years.

"Who is Pierre Cardin?" That is the question museum curator Matthew Yokobosky said he wants to answer with "Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion," which opened Saturday and continues until January 5, 2020.

The exhibit takes visitors back to the designer's beginnings, with no sign of the more than 850 licensed Cardin products cranked out since the late 1960s.

'It's all about movement'

A tailor's apprentice at the age of 14, Cardin knew how to make the clothes he designed, a rare skill in today's fashion world but which helped him translate ideas into reality.

Among his most emblematic creations: the high-waisted dress titled "Carwash," with its vertical cords that swished back and forth when a woman moved; and the dress with a "kinetic back," reminiscent of a Calder mobile made of wool crepe.

"It's all about movement," Yokobosky explained.

Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion is the first New York retrospective in forty years to focus on the legendary couturier.

'No small imagination'

The exhibit plays on Cardin's fascination with futurism and space exploration. Some tight-fitting outfits are reminiscent of the uniforms worn on TV series "Star Trek," with a unisex spirit ahead of their time. His "Computer" coat was inspired by the integrated circuit boards Cardin had seen in IBM computers.

The exhibit pays homage to Cardin not just as designer but as creator -- someone who found inspiration in everything from rubberized molds of food from Maxim's -- the famed Paris restaurant he bought in 1981 after frequenting it for years -- to Chinese pagodas.

The museum aims to take the exhibit to other US cities, then to Asia, where Cardin has long been popular.

Agence France-Presse