Fashion legend locked in sale skirmish

SHANGHAI: A local textile trading company has threatened to sue Pierre Cardin, the iconic designer of the French fashion house, for breach of contract.

Management for designer Cardin, whose brand of the same name was the first foreign clothing name to enter China in the early 1980s, had reportedly reached an agreement to sell the trademark in its entirety to Shanghai Century Star Import & Export Corp, which said that it planned to revitalize the diminished brand.

But talks between the two companies quickly soured when Shanghai Century Star discovered last week that the management of Pierre Cardin was holding separate talks to sell the right of its trademark to Cardanro, a shoemaker in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province.