DALLAS — Pierre Cardin’s most influential innovation — the brand license —  owes its creation to a Texan, said Rodrigo Basilicati-Cardin, president of the House of Pierre Cardin.

Speaking Friday at the Night of Stars gala presented by the Dallas chapter of Fashion Group International, Basilicati-Cardin explained that a Texan wanted to buy 200,000 pieces of a pleated red coat that Cardin showed at his first fashion show in Paris.

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“My uncle, being an Italian, said, ‘OK,’ but he had just five workers with him,” said Basilicati-Cardin, the late designer’s great-nephew.

The designer got an idea, Basilicati-Cardin continued. He explained to the buyer how to cut and tailor the coat, provided patterns and sent two men as temporary guides in exchange for 3 percent of sales.

“That was a new idea,” Basilicati-Cardin said. “A few years after, everybody did the same. So everything really started from Texas because of this Texan.”

The annual fundraiser drew a sold-out audience of 350 — its biggest ever — to the Thompson Hotel for a Cardin retrospective runway show plus award presentations to Fern Mallis and Levi Palmer and Matthew Harding of London-based Palmer/Harding.

“Those clothes have certainly stood the test of time,” said former Neiman Marcus Group chief executive officer Karen Katz, who gave FGI’s Lifetime Achievement Award to Basilicati-Cardin and the House of Cardin.

“Pierre Cardin was a visionary in the truest sense of the…