They find “a lot of similarities” between Rodrigo and his grand-uncle, Pierre. “Expressions of language, behaviors …” Gian Paolo Giannotti and Kimiyoshi Miura, which have two more than sixty years of house as stylists at Cardin, know what they are talking about. “For Cardin, luxury was creation, not to have a beautiful watch,” explains Gian. He could take a cake pan out and say to you: “With that, we could make a coat!” He was very manual, and Rodrigo, like him, has a multidisciplinary, experimental approach. “” Experimental “, like this bubble house where this one receives us, sumptuous architectural delirium perched on the heights of Théoule-sur-Mer, designed by the Hungarian Antti Lovag and bought by Pierre Cardin in 1992.” The first time I came here, in 1996, he housed me in one of the rooms located under the swimming pool, recalls Rodrigo. By the porthole, we saw the sun penetrate through the water … “
They then have known each other for a year. If he had already encountered it at the age of 8, Rodrigo has “no memory”, he says. When he was a child, this unknown great-uncle, but whose importance he already measured, was “like a mirage”, a “nebula” presence, tinged with mystery. What make the imagination work. If the designer, the latest of a siblings of ten children and sons of peasants, was made alone, Rodrigo, he grew up in a home of bourgeois intellectuals, in Padua, in Italy. His father, an architect engineer, and his mother, a mathematician, are in favor of a strict education.
“Their relationship with pleasure, leisure, was special,” he said. They did not consider it as something educational. I had to play in secret. If he is very accomplice with his older brother and sister, the latter are more “substitution parents” than companions of play, he describes. To populate his loneliness, he draws, serious, sculpt, manufactures objects. And, above all, there is the piano, learned at the municipal conservatory. Difficult to imagine these hands that seem made to catch a rugby ball run on a keyboard. Or even hold a needle or pencil. If his parents support him, they nevertheless refuse to devote himself exclusively to music.
“I left the house because of that,” he says today. He still embarks on civil engineering studies, with architectural restoration as a specialty. In parallel, he continued the piano and joined the prestigious Franz-Liszt Academy of Budapest. During his short passages in France, he lives with his grandfather, Erminio, older brother of Pierre Cardin. It was with him that he met him, in 1995, in Treviso, in Italy. The big designer is 72 years old, his grand-nephew, 24. Rodrigo, with his taste for science, design, tinkering and gamberge, intrigues his great-uncle as much as he impresses it with his virtuosity on the piano. The latter offers him to work with him and settle in his Venetian palace, Ca’bragadin.
Cardin tests his versatility by asking him to straighten the accounts of his company Tuscany of mineral water. Rodrigo flushes out a crooked accountant, the exam is successful. In the process, he creates a line of glasses, designs furniture and manages the productions of the shows organized in the properties of his grand-uncle, at the Château du Marquis de Sade, in Lacoste, in the Luberon, or at Espace Cardin, in Paris.
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He stops the piano to devote himself entirely to the brand
In 2000, Rodrigo became the only coactionary of Pierre Cardin Evolution by recovering 0.001 % of the capital of the company, that is to say the share devolved until then to Giovanna, the sister of the couturier. A tiny part but which weighs heavy. Very quickly, once his engineering diploma has been obtained, he stopped the piano to devote himself entirely to the brand. Being a concertist involves “training like a sportsman,” he explains, between eight and ten hours a day … it gave me too much stress “. Impossible to keep the pace while managing companies, festivals and designing furniture. A fortiori when you work with a character like Cardin, whose brain swarms with projects and which requires flawless dedication. “Everything was inspired,” says Rodrigo.
So much so that he has multiplied the licenses until, according to his detractors, to dilute the identity of the brand. Or even impoverish it. Rodrigo prefers to speak of “popularizing”. “Pierre said:” I have talent for creativity in general, I can draw jewelry, clothes, furniture or a house … For me, there is no difference. ” So when he was asked to grant a license, he always said “yes”, from the moment he imposed his style. »»
-Today, the brand has 140 licensees, on more than 800 products, in 80 countries. The parent company receives between 5 % and 10 % on each sale against the rights to use the claw. In 2024, these licenses would have generated a global turnover of 1.6 to 2 billion euros, 40 % of which were made in Europe and 5 % in China, where Cardin was established in 1984. In 2018, after more than two decades of companionship, the master appoints Rodrigo Managing Director of the Management Company Pierre Cardin, the holding company which controls all eight companies founded by the Couturier.
Rodrigo joins his surname the name of his grand-uncle
The same year, as if to permanently seal this almost filial link, Rodrigo joined his surname the name of his grand-uncle to become Rodrigo Basilicati-Cardin. With him, he recalls, “Pierre was modest, quite tender, even if sometimes he could have hard and sharp words”. Two years later, he took over the presidency of the board of directors of Pierre Cardin Evolution, head of the 80 employees of the group in France. Implicitly, he stands out as the successor.
When Pierre Cardin died on December 29, 2020, Rodrigo finds himself the sole master aboard an empire who, between his companies and his real estate heritage, is estimated at around 400 million euros. Enough to trigger a war of succession. The master, who cultivated ambiguity, left no instructions. A few months before his death, he had entrusted to Match: “After my death? I don’t think about it. I did not organize anything. Nothing. There is indeed this document, exhumed by Rodrigo in 2022, and which would designate it as heir, but its authenticity is disputed. In all, they are twenty-two to be able to demand a share of this inheritance.
Students in art and design of the Lycée Les Coteaux de Cannes present their creations in tribute to Pierre Cardin. March 21, 2025.
© ILAN German
Supported by his brother and sister, Rodrigo opposes the nineteen other beneficiaries who wish to sell the brand, while he wishes to continue to develop it. A complaint for “abuse of weakness, abuse of aggravated confidence and false and use of false” was filed against him, and a legal representative was appointed. “Was wasting time defending me tires me,” he explains. He placed me at the head of the company after tested me for more than twenty years … Until the last moment, he could have changed his mind but he did not do it. While waiting for justice to decide, there is no question of mortgaging the future. Nor to make a clean sweep of the past. He refuses to recruit an artistic director outside, because only those who know the house can make cardin, he thinks. “Question of loyalty, loyalty. »»
Ditto for the license system. If he does not question it, he manages the creative part and imposes a more demanding specifications for respecting the singularity of the brand, which is characterized by a futuristic style. Another priority: to encourage these licensees to favor fair trade. “The demand is there,” he explains.
In China, where we only had 2 % to 3 % of recyclable and environmentally friendly products, we increased to 30 % in a year and a half. “After having revived the making-which represents only 3 % of the overall turnover of the house-with models of” high ready-to-wear “, products in small numbers in Parisian workshops and whose prices oscillate between 3000 and 15,000 euros, he also reconquered the podiums of Fashion Week, deserted by his great-uncle. The businessman with a cosmic ambition, who dreamed of being a aeronautical engineer, also produced the prototype of the spatial combination of the German astronaut Matthias Maurer. What to send, he hopes, Cardin to conquer space.
