French designer Pierre Cardin dies at 98..

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Pierre Cardin, the French couturier who pioneered the designer licensing business by putting his name not just on ready-to-wear clothes but also on sunglasses, luggage, carpets and kitchen appliances, has died. He was 98.

France’s Academy of Fine Arts, of which Cardin was a member since 1992, announced his death in a tweet Tuesday. The academy did not give a cause or say where or when the legendary designer died.

Trained in the Paris workrooms of Christian Dior, Elsa Schiaparelli and Jeanne Paquin, Cardin opened his own salon in 1950. Nine years later he broke with the custom-order clothing tradition and styled a ready-to-wear collection for Printemps, a Paris department store. With that he became the first French couturier to create designer-label ready-to-wear clothes.

It was the first in a series of innovations by Cardin that set new standards for designers of luxury fashion. In the early 1960s he was the first women’s designer to launch a collection for men. He began with neckties, followed with shirts and expanded to include a complete menswear line including suits, jackets, pants and accessories.

He was the first French couturier to make inroads into the Asian fashion market, doing business in Japan starting in 1957 and China in the 1970s. He staged the first French couture fashion show in Beijing in 1979.