Fashion legend, French designer Pierre Cardin is selling his couture empire for $500,000 after more than 60 years at the helm. The next step will be the sale of his Maxim brand, which he built up around the famous Parisian restaurant that includes hotels, food shops and boats on the River Seine, as well as 800 connected product lines, all coming up to another half a million dollars.

The 82-year-old couturier, who built up his heterogeneous business from scratch, said that he wants to devote himself to supporting the arts. “I have reached an age where I want to do something different, ” said Mr Cardin, as reports Telegraph.co.uk.

“After a career lasting nearly 65 years, I feel it’s time to turn the page and devote myself fully to what I love, which is the arts and cultural charity. I’m a couturier above all, and will always be known for that, but I’m older and wiser. Nowadays, it’s the theatre, cinema, exhibitions and festivals that fire the passion in me.”

The designer also admitted that as he’s approaching the end of his life, he wants to sell the business so that his family doesn’t have to do it after he’s gone. He said he wanted his group “to go to textile industry professionals” and not “to fall into the hands of the money men”.

According to Mr Cardin, another reason for the sale was his disappointment with the modern fashion world. “I don’t do my collections in France now. Only abroad or to selected private clients. What’s the point? I presented one collection at 3pm and three hours later the designs had been copied from photographs and the television and were being sold to people who would copy them.” His discontent also concerned supermodel culture: “I have never used the Christie’s [Turlington] or Claudia’s [Schiffer] of this world. As far as I’m concerned, the models are less important than the designs. I don’t understand why they are famous. What do they do except wear someone else’s clothes?”

“I shall never retire, ” said the veteran foreseeing his no-less hectic life after his retreat from fashion. “I certainly don’t need the money, but it’s working and being creative that keeps me going, it’s my drug. But many of my friends and colleagues in the fashion world are now dead and after so many years in the business I feel I have seen it all.”