Mugler (Q3452)
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Mugler is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Mugler |
Mugler is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
After the storm, the calm, and after the urban bustle, the bucolic retreat. Or so it has been for Mugler’s Casey Cadwallader, who has lately been spending time at his country home outside Paris, flexing those green fingers of his while digging the earth, cultivating the flowers, and tending his plants. Just don’t think that he’s giving himself and Mugler over to some idea of full-blown romance rooted in Frenchjardins.Nope, not at all. This season everything was as darkly dramatic as ever. As Cadwallader took me through his moodboard a day or so before his show, he indicated a series of images showing cross sections of flowers that were almost anatomical, where the inner complexity of the blooms was laid bare. They looked rather disturbing in a sci-fi way—menacing, even. “Menacing,” he said laughing, “that’s what we go for here.” When he gardens, he said he’s been using an app called Picture This to distinguish between plant and weed, to determine what he should nurture and what he should discard.I mean, you could see this analogy coming a mile off, but a designer working on a collection isn’t so very different. For spring 2025, that flora theme, the one he tended, was evident in his silhouette, which he worked and worked and worked. What this theme gave him was the opportunity yet again to push the atelier as to what it could magic up. There were the likes of a deftly constructed black jacket from its pinched (his word) waist secured by a single pearl button before blooming upward to wide shoulders like an opening flower, while hipward—the hips have been an ongoing obsession for designers this season—everything got more geometric, with curved panels jutting outward from the body. This and variations of it came with very abbreviated skirts or (perhaps more effectively, IMO) some impeccably tailored wide pants. Elsewhere, Cadwallader drew on those cross-sectional images, with a short, sculpted black dress that dramatically exploded with a turquoise flower made from layers and layers of finely wrought organza.Yet as with all gardening projects, Cadwallader was also considering the bigger picture; nothing was seen in isolation. He was also drawn, he said, to reflecting the entirety of the Muglerverse he has created, giving women (and men—there were four looks for them here) a full sweep of how he sees the house dressing them. For Cadwallader, it was a pivot from the way he has done things in the past, and given it’s the house’s 50th anniversary, it was timely.
So, despite the fantasias, there was also khaki cotton drill suiting that lightly drew on Monsieur Mugler’s love of epic architecture, and denim in the form of blouson gilets and jeans with attenuated stemlike legs. “I wanted to do full looks—I can get really obsessed with the totality of them—and that’s something I wanted to push this season,” Cadwallader said. “And I wanted to be very clothing first. Mugler is quite known for its characters and personalities, and that’s not going away. The ethos of the brand and that confidence and that sensuality has to be there, but I wanted to try to put it in a very different presentation.”
26 September 2024
Casey Cadwallader was feeling theatrical for fall. Fresh off the back of securing what will surely be the definitive red carpet viral hit of the year–Zendaya going couture robot in the “Maschinenmensch,” the fully articulated robotic armor suit from Mugler’s fall/winter 1995 couture collection, for the London premiere ofDune2—he decided to embrace the overt showmanship that once earned Thierry Mugler the moniker “créateur de choc.” “I go to other people’s shows, and they’re very quiet. And when the show ends I’m like… I would die if it was this quiet!” said Cadwallader in a preview, showing the goose pimples to prove it. “I want people to smile, to laugh, to be turned on. There are brands that are about dressing you for the everyday, and I love those brands too, but I find myself at the helm of Mugler, and Mugler is different.”Mugler sure is different—but so are the times. In an era of corporate, conglomerate-dominated fashion, what would it take for Cadwallader to stage, for instance, an epoch-defining extravaganza to rival that of the 20th-anniversary show in 1995 that spawned Maschinenmensch? Held at Paris’s Cirque d’Hiver, that show was an hour-long spectacle starring Jerry Hall, Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss, rounded off with a performance by James Brown. The robot suit alone took six months to make by hand.Still, Cadwallader was determined to cause a commotion. “What a gift!” he said of the process of co-ordinating a three-act fashion show he’d dreamt up, complete with multiple curtain drops, Precious Lee and Paloma Elsesser silhouetted against a spotlight, Kristen McMenamy, Eva Herzigova and Farida Khelfa stalking the runway, and a whole heap of dry ice. “You get to have fun, you get to add drama and theater to what you’re doing. It’s more challenging but it makes you hone in on your idea.”He’d been looking at the vampiric 1980s collections in the archive, eschewing daywear—no denim, no Lycra—for blood-pumping, pulse-racing evening looks. “I had a sporty flair in my clothes for many years at the beginning of [my time at] Mugler,” he said. “Now I really want a more glamorous, dressed-up, decadent, textural creation.” The first looks explored the idea of undressing, with sheer corsetry, molded leather armor, leather belts and liquid stretch-velvet unpeeling from the body.
Then came experiments with print, a collaboration with the contemporary Canadian artist Ambera Wellmann, whose sexually-charged, surrealist paintings were adapted to adorn second-skin mini dresses and pants.
3 March 2024
This pre-fall 2024 Mugler lineup features Casey Cadwallader’s first formal men’s offering for the house. You may recall that his H&M x Mugler capsule featured men’s looks, and if you’ve seen the designer out and about IRL or URL (on Instagram, that is), you might have noticed he’s been his very own test subject. “Before, men’s was a bit of a naughty side-piece for me where I’d just put a couple of men on the runway,” he said, “but now it’s real. We have men’s buyers, style numbers, the whole thing.”In a way, Mugler men’s was already a thing. Cadwallader has expressed in the past that his fitting and creative process are fluid when it comes to who-wears-what. “The fit of the women’s baggy jeans came from a men’s fit, so it was easy to put them back on a man,” he said, and many of his tailored women’s jackets are cut with men’s proportions. “They only look authentically menswear-ish when they fit a man well, so I’d try them on myself regardless as we fit them.” All this said, the retail end of the industry still operates according to a binary system. Offering menswear formally allows Mugler to finesse the fit and sizing of the pieces that men (et al) were already buying from the women’s racks.This is also the first pre-collection Mugler has released since resort 2021. The brand was exploring a see-now, buy-now format, which it has moved on from with the arrival of Adrian Corsin as managing director last May. This is the second pre-collection Cadwallader has worked on since that appointment, and the first released publicly on this platform.Now you’re all caught up, so let’s get to the clothes. “I don’t want anything for Mugler to be dry, even a pre-collection,” Cadwallader said. The way he kept things juicy here was fabrication. A slouchy suit in Japanese moire velvet, an alluringly slinky mesh dress with flocked velvet tiles, a sexy sheath with laser cut leather feathering, and an extremely cool and very slick coat in “ultrasonic welded rubber” were all in the mix. “It still has to be decadent,” Cadwallader said.The lineup’s MVP is the tailoring, which retains Cadwallader’s trademark razor-blade sharpness with a newfound sense of elegance. Pre-collections, he explained, are an opportunity to explore the minimalist side of Mugler. “For me, minimalism is Mies van der Rohe,” he said (this is a good time to remind you that he is a trained architect). “It’s not boring, but extremely neurotically perfect.
” Cases in point: The extra-broad shoulders are supported by boning to avoid collapsing, the buttons have been wiped out, and every line has been meticulously placed.
5 February 2024
Casey Cadwallader’s Mugler has always mined a contrarian seam. To a certain extent, it has had to: Frustrated by the original Thierry Mugler fans who long for a return to Vegas-style spectacles, perhaps without considering how the founder sat at the helm of a multimillion-dollar couture house with the resources to match, Cadwallader has forged his own provocative path toward capturing the collective imagination. This summer’s buzziest Mugler moment? Pairing a reinterpretation of Thierry’s original bee headpiece from the spring 1997 couture collection with a sculpted chrome-leather body plate of his own design for Queen B Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour.Next up: Shifting back to the regular seasonal schedule and production cycle with a spring show that constituted something of a mini reset. The label adopted a see-now, buy-now model during the pandemic, unveiling collections during couture weeks. Now it’s business as usual, albeit one buoyed by a frenzied reaction to its H&M collaboration in May that saw Mugler megafans queuing around the block and some pieces selling out online within eight minutes. Cadwallader came away from the collaboration with several nuggets. First, that his menswear audience is far bigger than he’d ever previously imagined. Second, that’s there’s a serious clamor for his starkly sexy designs in the real world, far away from the occasionally snipy fashion press. Third, that the global visibility that comes with a H&M marketing campaign can be a springboard that takes your brand to the next level. “I think it’s interesting, because it does put you out there as, like, this big player,” he mused at a preview the day before his show. “But we’re kind of an emerging brand in a funny way. That’s how it feels when you’re inside.”Unsurprisingly, the collaboration gave his team, which has grown from 18 when he started in 2018 to 42 today, the requisite morale boost required to keep pushing the envelope. And it seems to have given Cadwallader the confidence to approach a Thierry predilection for bestiary that he had previously avoided, for fear of the results being “too costumey.” For spring, he admitted with a chuckle, he’d channeled his love of octopuses and jellyfish into high-voltage, highly theatrical designs.On a stripped-back, snow white runway lined with mechanical fans and bright lights, Cadwallader unleashed his aquarium.
The opening look was made up of a resin body plate with exaggerated hips and a wisp of chiffon trailing behind a prowling Mariacarla Boscono. Next came some experiments with segmented tailoring that nodded to the archive: hook-and-eye closures exposing flashes of skin, tulle bases giving the illusion of floating sleeves and trouser legs, and skeleton structures of boning revealing and concealing in equal measure. Mugler’s now signature spiral-cut denim jeans and corset-waist jackets were sprayed with ombré and polka-dot patterns inspired by sea slugs; body-con dresses came with seven-meter-long trains of chiffon that rippled tentacle-like in the wind; and a series of sequined bodysuits and dresses were embellished with transparent laser-cut sequin shards that sprayed out from the body, pulsing like plankton. As the sea-monster-style, floor-sweeping, fringe-adorned tuxedo stomped its way down the runway, you couldn’t help but smile. The stellar cast included Angela Bassett, Paris Hilton, Helena Christensen, Paloma Elsesser, Anok Yai, and Fan Bingbing all giving it everything, prompting hysterical whoops from the audience.That joyous reaction was impressive when you consider it came at the end of the penultimate day of PFW, when everyone’s feeling a little jaded. But there are a lot of shoppers who see themselves in a label that strives to be genuinely inclusive—and not just as a marketing ploy. On that note, Cadwallader wanted to set the record straight on the question of why, with his H&M linkup, he would dilute his own best-selling designs—the spiral-cut bodysuits, the body-sucking denim, the corset-pumped minidresses—and reproduce them at a lower price point. “I wanted to say, ‘I’m done with these. These have been my best things so far, but I’m going to pivot this way afterward,’” he explained. “I want it to keep leveling up—go more eveningwear, go more fluid, go more silk.” Wherever he goes, it’s clear his fan base will follow.
2 October 2023
During the lockdown years, comfy pajamas and slippers enjoyed a surge. Then, there was Mugler: the sexy, risque, outrageous, fetish-y Mugler that became the counter-intuitive community-gelling phenomenon. Masterminded by Casey Cadwallader, with an assist from Megan Thee Stallion and her butt cut-out jeans, Mugler’s success drove ‘body-consciousness’ to anatomical places that fashion never dared look at before.Which applied—in spades—to the multimedia, multi-everyone Mugler spectacular that Cadwallader threw in Paris last night. “We’re showing during couture week because we’re bad. At Mugler we do whatever we want,” he stated before the choreographed mayhem kicked off. “We’re quite an outlier in the way we do things,” he added. “We’ve been doing quite well by being so communicative and trying to entertain the public. The films have millions of viewers and the idea is that this is a live show.” It’s a see-now, buy-now collection, into the bargain.What went down: a runway frenzy that idolized the talents and bodies of models and friends of the house simultaneously merged with live-captured dolly footage of said models and friends, which was consumed on a vast screen erected at the top of a set of stairs. And all over the internet, obviously.Crews of men on movie dollies slid on tracks filming the wildly whooped-at cast: Arca, Ziwe, Omayra, Irina, Paloma, Mariacarla, Shalom, Amber, Eva Herzigova. There was hair swishing galore. A synchronized handbag-swinging lace-bodysuited dance troupe occupied some center steps. Then one by one, each Mugler supermodel climbed aboard another dolly, on which they could pose around a pole for the return journey.This second crew had a low-down camera which zoomed up crotch-wards, deploying a technique which might be termed up-skirting—had there been any skirts in evidence. Magnified on the monolithic screen to the height of roughly 25 feet, these oooh-aaah fragments were flashed in a live-streamed mix.What about the fashion content? Categorizing it as a collection of leather and lace doesn’t quite cover it. One thing to be said: Whether manifesting as baggy-topped leather chaps suspended under a hip-grazing heavy-duty chrome-zippered bodysuit, or a bisected one-leg, one-sleeve motorcycle suit, or indeed anything Cadwallader did with stretch black lace—it all miraculously, thankfully, stayed in place.And that is quite a technical achievement.
It’s tricky to compare Cadwallader’s Mugler with Manfred Thierry Mugler’s original haute couture extravaganzas. In 2023, as far as being inclusive to bodies and identities, Cadwallader for sure outdoes the departed master. But Monsieur Mugler was the outlier in his time: the man who foresaw fashion shows as cinematic tableaux spectacles. In his era, it was the fusion of old Hollywood, the Folies Bergère, and couture fantasia that made it controversially edgy. In the olden days of the 1980s, there were critics who rolled their eyes and demanded, “but is it fashion?” Plus ça change.
26 January 2023
Editor’s note: This collection was originally presented on July 10, 1997 in Paris and has been digitized as part of Vogue Runway’s ongoing efforts to document historical fashion shows.“Thierry Mugler: Couturissime” landed inBrooklynlast month, the final stop of its world tour. Several of the looks on display were pulled from the designer’s fall 1997 Les Chimères (“Mythical Creatures”) couture collection, which was presented soon after the company had been acquired by Clarins.The show closed with a dress that has been described as one of the most expensive couture creations ever. Two years in the making, it required the assistance of both the artist Jean-Jacques Urcun and the corsetiere Mr. Pearl. It was presented on the runway by the model Adriana Karembeu, who wore cat-eye contact lenses that heightened the fantastical element of the piece. In retrospect, all of the women as machines, insects, and religious icons that Mugler had put on his catwalks laid the groundwork for this hybrid creature that seemed adapted to all elements: air, water, earth, and fire.There was another beastie in the collection, a tiger-snake amalgam that took the form of a tattoo-like print. The rest of the collection was tamer and filled with characters that, at that point in Mugler’s career, had reached the level of caricature or cartoon—though his craftsmanship and constructions remained the real deal.The first exits, featuring hourglass suits, confirmed that Mugler’s lady remained a vamp. Next up were anatomical latex torsos and a single sci-fi ensemble. Later things took a turn toward the hairy (faux fur) and wild (animal prints). One model even donned antlers. Debra Shaw was cast as a draped Dracula, while Simonetta Gianfelici was a crystal-embellished princess bride. And this is far from an exhaustive list.Mugler had celebrated his 20th anniversary in 1995 with theLe Cirque collection. Two years later his exercises in camp and construction had progressed in a freer, even more uninhibited direction closer to that of a carnival.
25 December 2022
Casey Cadwallader is having a blast at Mugler.For spring, he’s reunited with Torso Solutions for the final installment of a trilogy of fashion films. Filmed in Los Angeles, the mind-bending video features a variety of vignettes that blend trippy glitches with the Mugler fierceness. There’s Megan Thee Stallion on a billboard; Chloë Sevigny doing a dip and turning into Barbie Swaee; Shalom Harlow and Amber Valletta sharing a kiss; and two Bella Hadids. He also recently co-directed a music video for Megan and dressed Sevigny for her wedding after-party, both of which came about, he says, after working on this video.Four years on, Cadwallader has settled in. “In the beginning I was very serious and worried about everything, but there’s this need to be irreverent with Mugler,” he says. He’s leaning into that irreverence, and the video captures it by balancing irony and seriousness in a URL-era continuation of the shows Mr. Mugler put on. Less runway, more performance.The collection is a strong exploration of his signature elements. Ombre body-con dresses suspended from sculpted collars referencing a 1998 haute couture dress feel fresh and directional. The denim is sharper and more aligned with Cadwallader’s shapewear, partly due to the transparency of the house’s “illusion tulle.” The fabric is a riff on Mr. Mugler’s segmented tailoring, which he made with fishing line. It has replaced Lycra in the denim and is being applied to the bodysuits.“This is the most bare collection I’ve done,” Cadwallader said with a laugh. “After this I’m going to dial it in a little bit.” A tied tailored jacket stands out. It can be worn criss-crossed or with the lapels pulled apart, as styled on Dominique Jackson. Versatility is something he makes a point of. “Not only is there a variety of people in the world, but there’s a variety within each person,” he said. “One can feel like they want to flaunt themselves at 10 p.m. and feel conservative at 10 a.m., or feel masculine at 10 a.m. and feminine at 10 p.m. I want to make clothes that can serve that.”The bareness might make his clothes feel niche, as if they were made exclusively for the stages they’re often seen on, but it’s this what makes them special. Who doesn’t want to feel like a pop star, at least part of the time? In today’s saturated market, niche is a great place to be.Cadwallader said he’s aware of the critique that “things look the same” in his collections. “But that’s what a signature is!” he said, laughing.
“Everything is evolving over time and eventually we’ll work into more things.” As to what those will be, only he knows, but he said he’s “ready for some volume.” We’ll be watching.He’s already thinking about his next video. “At a show you have, say, 500 people, but these videos…10 million people see them.” Social media has become key for fashion conversations, and with this format Mugler has leveled show-going editors and at-home spectators. “There’s this entertainment value and joy-giving to people that I don’t want to give up on. I feel a commitment to that now, so to bring it back to a closed room and keep people out is not an option for me.”
8 June 2022
Editor’s note: Vogue Runway is celebrating the most wonderful time of the year by adding six magical—and newly digitized—1990s haute couture shows to our archive. Thierry Mugler’s spring 1998 collection was originally presented on January 17, 1998, in Paris .Manfred Thierry Mugler came out of retirement to design Kim Kardashian’s 2019 wet-look Met Gala dress, a corseted silicon creation dripping with drops of “water.” “He had this vision of me as a California girl, getting out of the ocean, in L.A. or Malibu, and onto the red carpet,” shetoldVogueat the time.Kim Kardashian in Mugler couture.Photo: Jennifer Graylock - PA Images via Getty ImagesThe wet look was one theme in Mugler’s spring 1998 couture collection. Presented salon-style, the show was a mix of couture and ready-to-wear looks in which the designer explored a broad range of ideas and materials, including denim, quills, feathers, and metal.Though he’s best known for his dominatrix–meets–space vixen looks, there was a surprising element of classicism to this collection, which was focused on draping and the way materials flow over the body, almost like a drop of water slides down the side of a glass.Even when dressed, the true subject of ancient sculptures is the revealing of the body; Mugler added some burlesque-type spice to this idea, with cutouts that daringly bared the anatomy, be that by exposing almost all of the breast or the entirety of the buttocks (see looks 51 and 61). The boldest piece in the collection was a number where the chiffon that wafted over the model’s body was suspended from her nipple rings.Kim Kardashian in archival Mugler couture, 2019.Photo: Hollywood To You / Star Max / GC ImagesThierry Mugler, spring 1998 couture.Photo: Condé Nast ArchiveThe finale look, worn by the statuesque Nadja Auermann, was covered entirely in crystals, in an apparent reference to Mugler’s best-selling fragrance, Angel, a scent that still has wings decades later.
23 December 2021
The Thierry Mugler retrospective at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs during Paris Fashion Week opened with a bang befitting the famous couturier. Cardi B made an appearance, and designers Riccardo Tisci, Haider Ackermann, and Christian Louboutin came out to fête the man whose powerful 1990s spectacles were populated by supermodels in out-of-this-world creations.In the mix was Casey Cadwallader. The young American has reignited the Mugler flame since his arrival at the label in 2018 by adapting the label’s curvy, body-con aesthetic for the athleisure generation. Where Mugler’s corsets were rigid—his iconic 1992 motorcycle-chassis corset was made from plastic, metal, and Plexiglas—Cadwallader’s are built with two-way stretch. “You can tie your shoes, sit in a taxi, you can breathe,” he said.Material innovation and an embrace of extremes are essential to Mugler’s current success. There’s a pair of ass-less pants in the new lineup, but Cadwallader indicated that he might not have designed them if customers weren’t already wearing the part-sheer, part-opaque (read: mostly sheer) tights he’s been making for the last couple of seasons “without clothing.”The news at Mugler this time around is how he’s evolving his hyper-sexy vibe. In previous collections he’s leaned on black, but here he played with stretchy knit color-block layers to great effect, mixing emerald, ultramarine, bordeaux, and bright orange in one look and highlighter yellow, navy, and orange in another. His other experiment was born from a vintage Mugler bauble with a spray of flexible gold snake chains that he found at a flea market. “I loved how the chains moved,” he said. “I was looking for movement this season.” He sourced modern versions of the chains and made body jewelry from them. Bella Hadid models an intricate necklace top with a bodysuit in the brand’s new video, though Cadwallader’s fans are just as likely to wear it solo.
27 October 2021
Last year was anything but a stop-gap for Casey Cadwallader. “It’s true, it didn’t really slow down for us,” he said. “It was actually our most successful red carpet year.” That may sound like silly hyperbole, but he’s not wrong. Cast your mind back to Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, and Cardi B; remember too Kylie Jenner’s Halloween costume and Beyoncé’s rainbow get-up for her music video, “My Power,” fromBlack Is King. All Mugler. “It has really been a time to focus…and work my ass off!” said the designer, who recently canceled pre-collections to concentrate on custom-made pieces, otherwise known as his “sneaky way of doing couture.”“It’s important to do the jaw-dropping scandalous stuff; that’s what this house is built on. But it’s also about trying to address an interesting day-to-day wardrobe too,” Cadwallader said. Well, about as “day” as Mugler will ever get. “A lot of young people want to buy Mugler now. I’m trying to do the right thing for the right price,” he explained, pointing to expressive pieces made from recycled Lycra that won’t empty that demographic’s wallets. He’s also thinking a lot about how to elevate sportswear; combining sport with lingerie. Take, for example, the graphic, gravity-defying top that Bella Hadid wears, the one that looks like it’s supported on nothing more than a wing and a prayer, but is in fact a smart combination of fabric technology and illusion. It’s made from a super-stretchy mesh that not only sculpts and smooths the body but also completely disappears against any skin tone. “The idea of shape-wear is built into these garments; there is a lot of attention on fabric technology,” Cadwallader said. “For me, all bodies need to be designed for, not just skinny bodies, although, even skinny bodies sometimes have a bigger butt or boobs and...the clothes help you out with that instead of making you feel bad for having them. I’m celebrating different body shapes.”Cadwallader is having fun making these videos, too. “Should a hyper-charged Hunter Schafer jump off a box onto the runway to drum and bass music? Yes!” he exclaims, of his nine-minute film directed by Torso Solutions, which also stars Kembra Pfahler, Alek Wek, and Dominique Jackson. “I’ve always wanted models to break into dance on the runway or to do something, but when it’s a live show it’s very risky. The runway can be intense and scary, and the audience is often exhausted, but when you’re doing a film you can mess around, play, and edit.
” Like deciding to “rewind” and present the whole show backwards, as he does here. The best news? Having just moved the house to a see-now-buy-now model, it’s all available to buy right now.
31 March 2021
The pandemic hasn’t impacted Mugler’s standing with celebrities. If anything, the dearth of red carpets has led to more risk-taking when they actually happen, and that’s precisely what creative director Casey Cadwallader has been specializing in lately. Miley Cyrus called upon him for two of her more scandalicious looks this year. If you saw her in them, they’re probably seared into your brain; the first was a strapless see-through dress embroidered all over with tiny mirrors; the second, a body stocking more sheer than opaque that has 1.8 million likes on Instagram.Cadwallader also pointed out the increasing importance of music videos, those very 20th-century cultural artifacts, in the absence of live performances. He’s working on clothes for those apparently, too. In fact, about half of his time is spent on VIP requests. The other 50% he expends on the label’s ready-to-wear, but he’s not exactly playing it safe with this category either. “I felt it was time to deal with the fantasy side of Mugler,” he said, referring to the house founder’s infamous collections of the 1990s.There’s the hyper-sexy clothes, and then there’s the way he’s going about making them. Cadwallader is putting a lot of effort into sourcing more sustainable materials. He says those bodystockings will be constructed with 100% recycled lycra by fall 2021. And he’s also working at lowering the prices of pieces like the twisting-seam jeans he designed for his first Mugler collection two years ago and the Lycra and illusion tulle leggings and tops that he likens to “complex puzzles” of couture pattern-making. “There’s energy in young people that want to buy Mugler,” he said. That jibes with the trend toward body-conscious—and body-positive—collections we saw this season from emerging designers across Europe.Mugler is moving to a see-now-buy-now model starting in February. This capsule collection is a “prelude” of that outing, and—speaking of videos—Cadwallader and his team filmed one to promote it. The three-minute clip stars a Bella Hadid avatar and a cast of “all genders, all races, all sizes” friends of the brand. In that way, it quite effectively speaks to both sides of the designer’s reimagining of this brand.
31 March 2021
What is sexy? Thierry Mugler had some ideas in his day, and they were so potent—all exaggerated hips and shoulders and whittled waists—they continue to shape our memories of the 1980s decades later.Casey Cadwallader, who inherited this label a couple of years ago, took some time to warm up to Mugler’s kind of sexy—partly because he arrived at a moment when the house’s brand of brash wasn’t really trending. But no one could say he’s not operating at full throttle today. A good many of the looks on his fall runway weren’t even street legal. Wearing the body stockings—sheer save for black insets echoing Mugler’s famously dangerous curves—would require door-to-door transport. And probably a bodyguard. If anyone dares to wear these “naked” pieces, it will be Mugler’s celebrity crowd, performers on stage and on Instagram. Mesh dresses studded with a grid-like precision were somewhat more discreet and a shade more democratic for that reason.Cadwallader adopted a similarly fierce attitude for his tailoring. Much of it was cut from leather, which is tricky to fit. He had an easier time finessing the stretch pieces. Jackets were shaped by integral corsets, or else they came with portrait necklines that framed the bust—there was no fear of the nipple here. He even went so far as to build garter belts into the waistbands of a couple of leather skirts. An off-the-shoulder, long-sleeve bodycon dress was a model of efficiency by comparison, and a whole lot more appealing because of it.Cadwallader isn’t alone in his embrace of vampy provocation, though he does get points for being one of the few designers that sees sexy in all sizes. There “are 2s, 4s, 6s, 8s, 10s,” he said of his lineup. “You feel them turning on when they put on these clothes.” You’ve got to hand it to him for that.
26 February 2020
Casey Cadwallader’s tenure at Mugler has coincided with a renewed fascination with Thierry Mugler’s vintage work from the ’80s and ’90s. To a generation weaned on hoodies and leggings, the house founder’s exaggerated proportions and twisted glamour are super seductive. In turn, it seems that the culture’s embrace of legacy Mugler pieces has emboldened Cadwallader. With its extreme tailoring and endorsement of the pantsless look—Bella Hadid opened the show in a cropped jacket, net corset, and derrière-lifting stockings, that’s it—this collection was his most Muglerian to date.Backstage, Cadwallader clarified: “It’s also the most me.” For background, Cadwallader came up via Narciso Rodriguez’s studio, and he currently moonlights for the ski brand Aztech Mountain; he knows his own way around a scalpel-sharp jacket, and he’s familiar with performance fabrics. Those tools prevented the collection from looking retro. Cadwallader’s modern casting also gave it an edge. Hadid was representing for the supermodel contingent, but inclusivity of color, size, gender identity, etc., was the name of the game here. Even the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black’s Kembra Pfahler took a runway turn.The front row contingent was just as diverse, from Kelela to Violet Chachki to Paloma Elsesser. What might they be tempted by for their next big night out? Maybe a black blazer bra, which fastens with a hook-and-eye underneath the bust in front, and a pair of low-slung trousers to show off some toned abs? Or an LBD with half of its bias-cut skirt cut away? Or a body-con dress with ruching that accentuates curves instead of diminishing them? Pfahler got one of the show’s only low-key looks—a girl can’t be naked in blue body paint all the time. Her corseted blouson jacket and textured leggings looked good.
25 September 2019
Casey Cadwallader had a red carpet coup last month when Chloë Sevigny wore a Mugler gown of his design to the Cannes Film Festival premiere of Jim Jarmusch’sThe Dead Don’t Die. Strapless, with a sculpted ivory bodice above a curvy column of black with a hip-grazing slit, it was accompanied by long black gloves that wrapped around the neck harness-style.“Drama is a word I’m not that comfortable with, but it’s one I’m trying to embrace,” he said. “It’s part of the Mugler DNA.” It applies to Sevigny’s premiere dress and to the entirety of the label’s new Resort collection. Having shed the last vestiges of his former places of employ, Cadwallader brought a new clarity to this lineup. It looked definitively Mugler, but without succumbing to retro derivativeness. One example: the hourglass dresses with soft corsetry structure at the midsection. “They’re not uncomfortable to wear this way,” he explained. Also on point: jackets and coats with padded accents at the hips but otherwise quite exacting tailoring. He’s realized that exaggerated shoulders together with accentuated hips can be overpowering for some women. Which is why he’s also made a new, more fitted version of his clever spiral-cut jeans.Cadwallader cast a diverse array of characters, including a bodybuilder, vogueing dancers from the Paris House of Mugler, and the fortysomething model Debra Shaw. That sense of inclusivity is another way he’s moving the label forward.
19 June 2019
Casey Cadwallader isn’t one to stay still long. Having spent his first year at Mugler absorbing the brand ethos, he was ready to inject more of himself into his new lineup today. He said so backstage: “It’s different this season, and that was my goal. I’m doing the house justice with architectural tailoring, but I also dove into my passion for fabric development.” The timing is interesting. A Thierry Mugler retrospective, “Thierry Mugler: Couturissme,” is opening at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts this week, and the much-photographed likes of Kim Kardashian West and Cardi B have developed fixations with the house founder’s elaborately constructed and cantilevered archival pieces. Cadwallader is pursuing a new path. There’s a body-consciousness to his work, but it’s an easier-to-wear body-consciousness. Women going about their days and nights who aren’t dressing solely for photo ops demand it in 2019.Mugler gets its oomph this season from Cadwallader’s prints and jacquards. “They’re not quite animal, not quite mineral,” Cadwallader said. “We actually used the wordherbal.” In fact, one was inspired by a photo of Murano glass, another by an Italian terrazzo floor—so, closer to mineral then, but still abstract. Cadwallader evoked Mugler’s signature hourglass shapes by combining flat panels with draped bits—structure and flou—in one piece. He did this on fitted long-sleeved sheaths, as well as on flouncy minidresses shown with boots that nearly grazed the dresses’ hems. Like the tailored jackets, the dresses are engineered to flatter and enhance curves; that Cadwallader manages this while maintaining the comfort quotient is a nice trick. Elsewhere, there was pattern play in a pair of looks patchworked together from leather scraps found in a storage closet at Mugler HQ. Cadwallader is resourceful, and he’s got the right design instincts. It’s a promising combination.
27 February 2019
“I’m still trying to figure out who my icons are and what people come to the brand for,” said Casey Cadwallader with commendable frankness at Mugler’s Pre-Fall appointment. Yet the answers seemed right there, arrayed on the racks behind him.Returned were Cadwallader’s multi-panel, 32-seam jeans and jackets, this time in green velvet as well as denim, plus a cotton patterned with the season’s patchwork collage, Le Corbusier–inspired print—informal pieces, but special via the particularity of their construction.Way more dressed up, yet heavily sportswear inflected, was a voluptuous tuxedo jacket in black wool that featured hourglass-enhanced hips in duchesse satin with neoprene flex. This came teamed with a kicky synth-crepe pant that featured a preprepared VPL.A blue body-con dress in synthetic jersey had a wetsuit half-zip and patches of compression material designed to erect the chest and elevate the bosom. This arrangement was external here but applied from inside in other Cadwallader garments; he called it his “secret compression corset.”His stirrup “compression” leggings, with their ergonomically arranged grid of metal-pressed stripes, were a version of Thierry Mugler’s original corsetry reimagined for the Pilates age. Other leggings in gunmetal or bronze stretch taffeta, teamed with stiff-looking but flexible jackets, pulled taut when worn to resemble a layer of seamless liquid metal that was very Avengers-ready. Cadwallader is producing performancewear without the tiresome pretense that his customer will be wearing the clothes to set a personal best in. The point is tolookyour personal best. Somewhere in between Nike ACG and Eres—and distinctly flavored with the enduring codes of Mugler—Cadwallader’s is a clever formula to explore.
16 January 2019
Casey Cadwallader is the new man at Mugler. After presenting his preseason collection informally, he was on the runway this morning with a significantly different kind of setup than his predecessor, David Koma, who favored big shows and big-time supermodels. Koma’s was a flashy Mugler—tilted to after-dark—that fit with the brash fabulosity of the house founder’s ’80s and ’90s heyday. Cadwallader seems interested in realigning the label to jibe more with how contemporary women lead their real, glamorous lives.He shrunk the space, booked a cast of mostly unknowns, and sent out, for his first look, an oversize, seamed black blazer and matching biking shorts with mid-heel ankle boots in blazing white. It’s an up-from-the-streets outfit that suggests he’s paying attention to the boss athleticism with which celebrity influencers are dressing these days. That’s a good instinct. The runways have ceded impact to the streaming reality of social media. Not coincidentally, there’s a renewed taste among the fashion cognoscenti for strong tailoring, which could work in the Mugler brand’s favor, with its legacy of extreme suiting.Another sign of Cadwallader’s with-it-ness was his denim, which was similarly seamed and had an interesting full-through-the-knees look. (The spiral-cut jeans were good in his preseason, too.) But it wasn’t as casual as all that sounds. Cadwallader did some time at Narciso Rodriguez, in addition to Loewe and Acne Studios, and he clearly picked up a thing or two there about streamlined, aerodynamic evening. Cadwallader achieved his hourglass shapes here with external corsets or internal engineering. Though there’s clearly an audience for those exposed corsets—again, something you learn on Instagram—the dresses with the internal construction were the bigger achievements. A marbled print number from the work of artist Samara Scott that featured an inset black demi-cup bra was particularly fetching. It’s early days, but Cadwallader is looking like a smart choice.
26 September 2018
“I love it when a boy is as beautiful as a girl and a girl is a handsome as a man.” So said Casey Cadwallader, the New Hampshirite recently appointed as designer at Mugler, as we checked out his first Resort collection for the house.Cadwallader’s predecessor, the Georgian designer David Koma, was very much about a powerfully defined, often hard-edged femininity, and his version of Mugler worked. Cadwallader’s sensibility is completely different, of course: His version of Mugler very much looks like it will work too, just from a different angle.This was an on-purpose softer, street-ier Mugler girl/boy (some of the pieces are designed to be unisex, or are cut for men, too). Really enjoyable was the sympathetic not-quite symmetry between the seams of corsetry in the fitted torsos of Cadwallader’s full-armed washed nylon jackets and peplumed armless cotton tops—these seams narrowed the waist—and the gently spiraling, fringe-marked, 16-seam per-leg seam in his jeans: These seams widened the leg. The denim also came un-fringed, with a complementary high-hemmed seamed jacket. This seaming seemed a trademark in the making.After starring in the Spring campaign, Debra Shaw returned to model looks for Cadwallader’s Mugler book that included that jacket in 12 subtly different shades of blue twill above some patched blue cargo pants with a modest trail of strapping at the ankle. Parachute pants in more washed nylon—blue, white, black—with zip-able sections to inhale or exhale the line of the garment looked sexy and tough.Evening looks—or what-the-hell brunch looks—included two fabulous fringed pieces: a black, bodiless jacket from whose shoulders hung a dramatic swaying mass of knitted black fringe, and a dress that supported what Cadwallader said was a total of around 900 meters of fringe in eight shades of “nude” with blurring-with-movement continents of yellow, raspberry, and blue. Discussing an airbrush-printed sheer T-shirt made of a springy recycled plastic, Cadwallader referred to the “underpinnings” worn beneath them: so charming. He seems a calm, assured, and ideas-rich steward at Mugler. And those jeans are great.
23 June 2018
The revolving door is swinging faster than ever and the rumor mill churns at warp speed. Talk about who’s in where and who’s out there has replaced conversations about actual fashion. Still, the emergence of an unknown name is rare. An unknown with fresh ideas and talent to match even rarer. Casey Cadwallader, the 38-year-old American installed as creative director at Mugler in January, looks like just such a designer.Cadwallader has worked behind the scenes for years: as a leather and fur specialist at Loewe, in Narciso Rodriguez’s New York atelier, and most recently at Acne Studios. And he’s brought that high/low, elegant/everyday sensitivity to his work at Mugler. That’s a departure for the label, which was helmed for the last several years by David Koma, whose focus was on the more performative aspect of the house heritage. Every outfit was an event—or at least required an event in which to wear it. Cadwallader, in contrast, has devoted a fair proportion of the 25 looks in this capsule debut to denim. Not your typical Acne boyfriend jeans, but an elaborately patterned style with pronounced hips and seams that twist around the legs. Mugler’s sculptural tailoring, meanwhile, comes two ways, in a men’s wool twill jacket pulled from the archives and cinched at the back and sides with corset strings, or with the curvy architectonics built in. Sexy hourglass dresses, another brand signature, are tastefully and sparely done; in that way they’re reminiscent of Cadwallader’s mentor Rodriguez.Where he did venture off Mugler script, Cadwallader was experimental and adventurous, hooking up with the artist Samara Scott on a group of plastic trenches that bring to life her “slippery” canvases. Wedged between layers of PVC are random things like cumin, toothpaste, and even chewed gum, the colorful, blurry results of which are more enchanting than that description sounds.Cadwallader is backing all this newness up with a Instagram campaign showcasing the women who inspire and influence him. That’s predictable enough, but photographer Arnaud Lejeunie’s subjects are not the usual millennial suspects. Instead, Cadwallader has enlisted women like Debra Shaw, who walked Mugler’s runways back in the day; the French Olympic swimmer Anna Santamas; and the transgender DJ Dustin Muchavitz. Mugler’s Cadwallader era is going to be interesting to watch.
9 May 2018
Robin Wright made for an engaging—okay, transfixing—seatmate at this Mugler show. She is in town until Monday, plans to catch a few shows, doesn’t get why they start so late either, and highly recommendsNow: In the Wings on a World Stage, the documentary about Kevin Spacey’s experience staging Shakespeare’sRichard IIIfrom back when he was at the Old Vic. She was, of course, wearing Mugler—tight and white and corseted at the waist. “So, a little bondage,” she observed.Once the runway started running its course, David Koma presented an opening pair of denim corsets over jeans and a skirt; both featured the turned-up silhouette of a giant folded hem at their respective waists. After some more sculptured denim, we saw another corset—shiny and black this time—over a black chiffon skirt. When a similarly skirted, wide-belted, and soft shirt–clad Yasmin Wijnaldum moved in every direction as she progressed down the runway (in a manner for which the correct verb has not yet been phrased), Wright commented: “Just look at her walk!”Such looseness is rare for Koma, and more came later in a series of long, colored chiffon dresses cut through with fine metallic yarn. There was plenty of more conventionally Koma-esque-ness in tight dresses and bodies carved in cut-outs held together by hook and eyes. The dialectic of corsetry and flounce had come after watchingLes Pétroleuses, the 1970s comedy-Western featuring Brigitte Bardot and Claudia Cardinale, Koma observed afterward. Thus also the riff on rattlesnakes in two striking looks fashioned in a mosaic of leather patches, plus a skirt in paillette snake pattern. It was good to see him broaden his vocabulary a bit while remaining true to his central message, so pithily summed up by Wright.
30 September 2017
Anybody who missed David Koma’s Fall show for Mugler will be excused for calling the shoulders he did for Resort, major. While they may be quite powerful as far as such things go, in comparison to the peaked beauties of last season, they’re no shoulder at all. In fact, that’s precisely how Koma described them. As he explained at his presentation today, now that he’s been at the French house for three years, he’s serious about buckling down on cut. He’s in the business of measuring millimeters, and each and every one counts when you’re talking about a body-con leather dress with the Mugler logo screaming down the side à la motocross gear. The logo detailing felt like an easy nod to current trends. This label has such a strong signature—those shoulders, the hourglass fit—such nods aren’t really necessary.Koma’s tailoring looked extra sharp today. With fewer and fewer of us wearing suits, he was clever to apply that razor focus of his to a strappy black jumpsuit. He said he was hoping that the sequined corset with a curvaceous bustline that looked particularly Thierry-ish would end up on a red carpet with the slim-line black pants he paired it with. He’s not the only one—down with the strapless mermaid dress. Playing against type worked for Koma, too. A long-sleeve slightly A-line dress with bare shoulders was languid in all the right ways.
6 June 2017
By holding a crystal-inlaid brooch in the Thierry Mugler trademark star design—all jaggedly mismatched Angel-bottle angles—against looks on the board backstage, you could see how directly David Koma had translated its shape into this collection.We started with bold pointed shoulders on high-shine outerwear with radiating lapels and dresses that contrasted blue fabric with black leather pleating in sharp isosceles relief. A fine nude-at-the-arm Le Smoking with a shoulder line that featured little star studs twinkling on the sheer sleeves. Generously ribbed cashmere sweaters were so soft they slipped down their wearers’ arms as they marched to a heavily deconstructed remix of George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex.” Models wore contrastingly unyielding back skirts in fabric strafed with star contours in silver and blue pin or leather with star-silhouette cut-outs. And so the sky turned. Different star systems included a longer section of plissé twinkling against black and springy lamé bodices, and tops and dresses angularly folded around the body in silver or midnight blue. The concept was straightforward, but the effect was powerful. Lovers of powerfully shouldered suiting should set their sights on Mugler next season.
4 March 2017
For any designer, one of the hardest tricks to pull off is to make an old house new again—all the more so if the founder is still very present in fashion’s collective memory. While Mugler is best remembered for couture, it falls to the brand’s current designer, David Koma, to burnish its relevance in ready-to-wear.Three years into the job, the designer has sussed out what could prove a winning recipe, by stepping away from dresses in favor of a return to chic tailoring. “One of the questions I always ask myself is, ‘How many jackets does anyone want to buy?’ ” he mused. “Creating a beautiful jacket is always a challenge, but I love a challenge and our heritage makes it a little easier.”Taking as a springboard the work of one of his favorite artists, the Art Deco–era painter Tamara de Lempicka, Koma decided to focus on day-to-evening options, notably the pantsuit. “Lempicka conveys a very graphic feminine masculinity,” he noted. Filtered through the Mugler lens, that translates into powerful shoulders, sleek lines, and enough of what Koma calls “shadowing” to soften the whole effect.Though some of the season’s offerings nod to Mugler’s signature wasp waist, memorably in one belted, bottle green leather jacket, Koma also set forth relaxed hourglass shapes on plane-shouldered jackets paired with tapered, ankle-length trousers or controlled flares. Other stalwarts included pinstripes (on the bias or sequined) and the house’s perennial best seller, the black jumpsuit. The feminine side came through in contrasting textures, colors, and shine, for example, in yellow crushed velvet pants, plissé separates, asymmetrical tops, and or a lily print. The patent-embossed tweed overcoat would do Helmut Newton proud—with a suit, over jeans, or with nothing at all.
25 January 2017
The frenzied thrashing of strings from John Williams’s theme to Jaws washed over us as the last models left the catwalk. The song was a clue aboutDavid Koma’s inspiration for this Mugler collection. “I have this little obsession with sharks—their danger and their beauty,” he said backstage. You could certainly spot a streamlined shadow of the selachimorpha flitting through the runway waters here.Dégradépaillettes glittered in sharkskin shades of gunmetal while patent flats with inset commando soles had the bullet-like shape of a great white’s nose.Less elusive than Koma’s starting-point sharkiness was the influence of scuba and swimwear. There were black pants that fitted like wetsuits, with tidelines of white piping running down the leg. A cropped, shoulder-padded, sweatshirt-shaped sweater and mini skirt were reminiscent of that shark chainmail worn as insurance by undersea adrenalin hunters. Leather bonded to neoprene were used in white jackets with faux-utilitarian fastenings and gently rounded shoulders and arms. There were a lot of aesthetically-placed zippers designed to draw the eye to the thigh, neckline, or hip. Ultimately this was a broadly enjoyable collection of sleekly sexy, sports-inflected womenswear. Koma said that his main goal for this season was to have fun. He was certainly working within his comfort zone: treading water but in no need of rescue.
1 October 2016
Installed at Mugler for over two years now, David Koma has turned a new generation of nubile 20-somethings and wish-they-were-still 20-somethings on to body con. This being Resort, there were plenty of cutout, clingy minidresses on offer. The news was in their hues: Hot shades of coral and pink paired with black on one tube dress, and on another number very much inspired by a dress from the Mugler archives, a rainbow wave of color cascaded from neck to mid-thigh hem. Despite the curvy look of his dresses, Koma’s lines have always been sharp and angular, the cutouts geometric. Here, he liked a more organic look for his necklines, hems, and cutouts, and coupled with the fresh colors, it made for a softer, sweeter overall effect. The midriff cutout on a calf-length tank dress was gathered with a drawstring. It was another nice extension of what has become a familiar look.Koma’s most interesting work here centered around tailoring. Mugler, of course, will forever be known for the strong shoulder and nipped-waist silhouette he made his signature in the ’80s. Updated with softer, less extreme lines and slightly rounded sleeves, and what is no doubt a comfier, easier-to-wear fabric, Koma’s jackets look right for 2016.
7 June 2016
Beyond a grain-strewn runway the exact ochre shade of Roland Garros center court, a full moon breached the horizon of its dot-matrix screen and rose behind a skyscape of roiling cloud. This was, said David Koma afterwards, the result of a midwinter studio daydream. “I was starting do this collection, and it was raining outside. I’d already had some thoughts about the color palette: dark and wintery. But then, when I looked out, I thought, I need some sun! Some dreams about heat. I love the imagery of the savannah, so I started with the colors of yellow and orange.” Don’t mistake this for a Safari collection, however. Koma’s iteration ofMugleras destination of choice for those in search of tightly structured, cleverly conceived, metallic-accented, body-con would not have allowed for bandoliers, cargo pants, and sun hats. Still, that stormy-night impulse did bear some new fruit. Leopard flocage on tulle—sometimes underlaid with a poppy yellow—morphed into an expression of the same pattern cleverly realized through flat silver chains whose shape dissolved with motion.Croc featured heavily, either as the texture on wide-notch lapels, a white stitched frame within Koma’s signature modular designs, or—most interestingly—in one off-the-shoulder black dress of croc sliced vertically, then bonded to red jersey beneath. Movement gave the strips kinetic life and give as they revealed lines of scarlet beneath. Key Koma pieces included one black jumpsuit with a neckline of two stitched arcs—seemingly simple and very striking. Flat white loafers worn beneath wide-waistband, hip-slung, loose black crepe pants represented a gently successful evolution toward ease, although the opening one-shouldered leather look erred on the lumpen. Slit skirted gladiator dresses flirted, inevitably, with the Italianate but had a tough sleekness. One particular minidress—open-backed and angularly hemmed in black jersey with two lines of white-flecked croc running from armpit to thigh—had blunderbuss power. Not all these looks shared that potency, it’s true, but this was a moonlight diversion worth taking.
5 March 2016
It was out with the epaulets and military insignia of Spring and in with nipple rings atMugler’s presentation today. The punkish piercings of an archival Thierry Mugler dress caught designerDavid Koma’s attention for Pre-Fall. Affixed with metal hoops and spikes, the black leather number it inspired is strictly dominatrix material; only the bravest of young starlets would go up against the fashion police wearing it.Other declinations of the look, however—everything from tailored jackets and pants on down to chunky fisherman’s sweaters threaded with silver metal loops—will prove safer to wear. That’s intentionally so. As the Mugler business grows (an e-commerce launch and a new Paris store are both in the works for 2016), Koma is pushing further into daywear, or at least non–red carpet attire. The trick is: How to maintain the Mugler m.o. while diversifying? Faded blue jeans, though trending elsewhere, looked somewhat out of their element in the lineup, as did the tees and sweatshirts that didn’t make the lookbook. But fuzzy angora sweaterdresses worn with over-the-knee stretch denim boots captured the sexual predator vibes that form the essence of the Mugler aesthetic. The same goes for a body-con dress in marled gray stretch with raised seams intended to resemble body scarification.
6 January 2016
The ship’s propeller backdrop and aircraft carrier runway semaphoredDavid Koma’s theme atMuglertoday: military. What,again? The frequency with which the uniform of war is press-ganged by designers intent on crafting clothes to love can seem counterintuitive in an industry based on generating innovation.Donatella Versacejust launched her martial-themedSpring ’16 collection—a campaign for gender empowerment—whileChalayan’swas a typically dense take inspired by the end of Cuba’s isolation. Every season, for either gender, you can expect a significant military presence. Why? It’s not complicated. When done well, military collections can make the utilitarian seem sexy via universally recognizable signifiers.Koma’s casus belli seemed straightforward, too: Half-hiding behind a mirror to evade well-wishers after this show, the designer said, “We have such incredible girls here, and it’s about being inspired by them. Wanting them to look cool, to look fresh, and to enjoy clothes.”He rattled through pretty much every military service. The first wave was naval, an interplay of navy and white with decorative insignia buttons on looks that included an angled peak-lapel, three-button, double-breasted jacket and minidresses that rearranged the fold and contrast of traditional sailor suits. One dress featured a lovely helter-skelter twist of white that twined around the body above a four-button accent. Softer items included an asymmetrical-hemmed plissé dress with half-zip details at the waist. Next into the field came the army; the olive section included a cutaway backless dress in leather—the top and bottom half linked by a clasp of three gleaming officer stripes. Soft kicky trousers were topped with deconstructed bodices, while the classic field jacket was turned into a sleeveless minidress with silk poacher pockets—a skinny belt peppered with eyelets cinched the waist.A dress decorated with a grid of angular metal openings and dresses crisscrossed with metal-piped slashes were harder to link to Koma’s theme, although the former did demand the wearer go commando: “She must NOT wear underwear,” ordered the look-board backstage. Koma’s body-con brigade kept coming; some in hefty-heeled, pointy-toed, monk-strap flats, some with the straps of their handbags looped through the epaulets at their shoulder. A burst of burnt orange looks ran contrary to the camouflage agenda of real militarywear but had the explosive impact that Mugler’s customers enjoy.
The final push was Doutzen Kroes, looking invincible in a backless navy jumpsuit. This was a deceptively simple but cleverly executed take on military, and it won.
3 October 2015
It's been a year since David Koma joined the house of Mugler, and considering the breadth of his second Resort collection—as well as the very busy sales room in which it hung—things seem to be going well. Probably because Koma has the confidence to keep designing slick, body-con wares while the majority of his peers are still drifting around the loosely ruffled, waistless 1970s. After all, there is always a market for sexy.This season, Koma's bottom-grazing dresses and hip-baring gowns were inspired by the op art movement. That meant swerving lines creeping down a column dress, diagonal stripes shooting left and right on a pieced-together one-shoulder number, and a deep-V blazer color-blocked in black and white and sectioned off by a sheer inset of white pearls.While the flashes of skin—revealing a sliver of collarbone or a hunk of tummy flesh, depending on how deep the cut—nodded to youth, that sentiment was pushed up against a rather traditional color palette. Along with his favorite black and white, Koma incorporated Resort-appropriate colors like pastel yellow—whipped into a slick suit—and mint green, which gave a one-shoulder, deep-slit frock just a bit of sweetness. Many of the looks were accented with jumbo-size metal "pearls," nicely punching up otherwise flat designs. This collection suggested that Koma is capable of making repetition dynamic.
8 June 2015
Under the tutelage of an in-house "nose," David Koma has been in intensive training to bring his nostrils up to speed with the fragrance side of Mugler's business. "It's incredible, very interesting, and part of the big project to bring both sides of the house together," Koma said of his olfactory crash course after today's show.Apparel-wise, Koma is benefiting from his time at Mugler, too. It's not that he needs to learn a great deal; his recipe for rigorous (but not severe) body con has been long developed. The advantage is that chez Mugler, exposed to neither the hints of scrappiness in production nor the incongruity of context that sometimes compromises his clothes' impact in London, that recipe can be savored to best effect. And while hot, (mostly) short, unabashedly sexy dresses do not chime with the spirit of our age—perhaps only Versace is knocking them out as dedicatedly as Koma—it means that, counterintuitively, his métier represents something of a niche.Today Koma took circuitry, the innards of whatever device you are using to read this now, as his decorative theme. Perhaps the finely constructed but gaudily bonded gold-coated leather and white silk/wool pieces were a tad de trop, but for the most part it was a riff gently played. His opener of chip and conductor silk panels on wool, black on black, hummed gently. The one-shoulder, wire-strap dress in leather solder-board green didn't screamTron, even if, when asked if the film had influenced him, Koma confessed, "a bit." The movement of one knit dress (black, solid-bodied but semi-sheer-gridded at the skirt and arms) was strikingly sinuous, but most all of these pieces—including the tightly tailored leather topcoats—had a fierce sexiness to them. This collection was considerably more Koma than Mugler. But, as the man himself is out of the game and his current replacement has his own, not entirely incompatible point of view to express, it makes sense to let him express it.
7 March 2015
David Koma landed in New York City yesterday to find a look from his Spring Mugler collection onMarie Claire's February cover featuring Gwyneth Paltrow. Not a bad way to start 2015. Koma has been at the helm of this French heritage brand for three seasons, Pre-Fall included, but his clothes are catching on in a way that those of his predecessors failed to do. Where Nicola Formichetti tapped into the performative, extravagant aspect of Thierry Mugler's legacy, Koma, who continues to develop his own London-based line, is working in a lower, more relatable, although undeniably body-conscious key."I'm taking it step-by-step without going crazy in the archives," Koma said at an appointment. "I thought it was important to keep the Mugler spirit without doing retro." The Mugler spirit. Despite the designer's rather brash '80s sensibility, what Mugler stands for isn't all that well-known outside of the high fashion world today. In Koma's estimation, it's the tailoring: "Very sharp tailoring." If you're looking for a more contemporary frame of reference, the new Mugler is situated somewhere along the Donatella Versace-Anthony Vaccarello continuum. Polished metal grommets of varying sizes—windows to the bare skin underneath—accented neatly cut single- and double-breasted jackets. And peekaboo details also turned up on knitwear (simpler cable-knit sweaters didn't make the lookbook). Narrow, fitted trenches, in both napa leather and a closely cropped shearling, got a lot of play; otherwise, the silhouette was super-short and leggy.For evening, Koma tends to like a covered-up look. He had a long-sleeve jersey gown with keyhole detailing at the neckline on offer, as well as a silk-blouse-and-long-skirt combo. The dress that will make the rounds this awards season, however, was more bare than not, with a grommeted bib front and a web of skinny straps in the back. When it does show up on the red carpet, it'll be another step on the path to wider recognition for Koma's Mugler.
5 January 2015
When David Koma was 13 years old, he religiously taped every Thierry Mugler show he could find in flashback on the fashion channel that cable TV piped into his home. "It was the first brand that inspired me," he said today, after his second collection for Mugler (Resort was Koma's debut for the house). "Surreal" was his understandable summation of this turn of events.So it was a shame that Koma didn't manage to translate that degree of personal engagement into something more potent. Putting it bluntly, he played it very safe, "clean and easy," in his own words. The tangiest element of the collection was the "omega" metal chain that snakily accented keyhole cutouts. (On the hip of a sinuous white gown, the cutout was a ringing echo of the Georgina Grenville Dress, one of Tom Ford's more epochal Gucci moments.) Otherwise, Koma kept things Bond-girl-sleek, monochrome and minimal. There was an undoubted athleticism to his interpretation of the Mugler aesthetic—zippers and slits and tank tops—and perhaps that added up to a commercial take on the legacy. But it was hard not to conclude that when the "Thierry" was deleted from the label, the personality went with it.
27 September 2014
David Koma didn't look at Mugler's vast, 5,000-piece archive before designing his debut collection for the house. "I wanted to focus on thenewMugler woman," said Koma, who was appointed creative director in December, replacing Nicola Formichetti. Koma said the archive will be referenced for future collections—and just because he turned away from it this time around doesn't mean he doesn't respect the house codes. In fact, the designer began his career because of Thierry Mugler: After seeing a range of Mugler looks in his mother's fashion magazines as a child, Koma instantly decided that fashion was his calling.For Resort, the Paris-based, Georgian-born talent infused his collection with the signatures we've seen in his eponymous line (strict, sleek tailoring, for example), but there were still notable nods to the Mugler of old, namely clear sequins scattered down a zip-skirt gown, snap closures, functional and decorative metal accents, and grosgrain straps that could transform a jacket with a boxy menswear silhouette into something fitted and feminine. That Mugler va-va-voom factor was there, too, oozing out of strapless, sculpted minidresses with zigzag grosgrain bodices, itty-bitty sheer crop tops in 3-D mesh, and a particularly sexy pencil skirt with bondage detailing down the side.So anyone hoping for the exaggerated shoulders and theatrical wares Formichetti aimed to channel in his Mugler lineups (which received mixed reviews) was out of luck. That's because Koma aspires to give women a full wardrobe rather than just one or two statement pieces. "We wanted to have a fresh start, and to build a beautiful base that the modern woman can wear for every occasion, season after season," the designer explained. To wit, he covered all the necessary bases. For day there were easy knit pullovers, one of which had sheer black insets; flattering silk trousers in white or black; and a bevy of slick jackets (a stretch-leather iteration had a metal spine of sorts). Come cocktail hour, the Mugler femme can choose from fitted but conservative knit body cons, fluid jumpsuits, or paneled dress pants with a matching top. If she wants to hit the town, she can opt for a range of saucy frocks with thigh-high slits and slashes of contrasting bonded silk or grosgrain. A silk and mesh sweatshirt gown felt particularly fresh and could be worn for any occasion.
The palette will speak to a host of consumers, too: Black, white, gray, and blush garments were clean (but certainly not quiet—it's stillMugler,after all), and vibrant highlighter prints in cobalt, electric yellow, navy, and fire orange offered welcome pops of vibrancy. If there's any criticism to be made, it's that Koma could have used a lighter touch when it came to his recurring metal loop embellishments. But all in all, this was a strong first outing for the designer, who says an accessories range is not far off. And while the team couldn't reveal any confirmed retailers yet, it sounds like the big dogs are biting.
9 June 2014
Tonight in the hangarlike Halle Freyssinet, the Mugler show took as its starting point the bygone days of air travel. The house's creative director, Nicola Formichetti, has a personal interest in the subject, as his mother was once an air hostess, frequently crossing the globe; it was "an idea of time travel, in style," he said before the presentation. The sixties were the fertile starting point, but there was also a debt to the fifties and nineties in what followed. Formichetti gave a nod to the futurism of Oscar Niemeyer's architecture—especially in the curvilinear silhouettes of the opening looks, with a pale color like poured concrete or metal—without being metallic or robotic.In fact there was very little in the way of man-made, futuristic, artificial fibers in this collection—something that has become a signature during this new era. Instead there was an idea of the future viewed from the past here, especially with the expert fabric choice by the womenswear designer Sébastien Peigné. The most successful looks used fabric from the suppliers Crevacuore, known for their luxurious mid-century style, shown in the peach crushed bouclé or the gradations of gray cashmere in the opening. Peigné's past working at Balenciaga under Nicolas Ghesquière was evident here, especially with a further stripped-back, aerodynamic spin on shapes and volumes that had a nod to the Cristobal archives. Yet Peigné proved he had something distinctly his own in the particular tailoring of the skirtsuit looks in the show.Where things seemed to be on a less firm footing was in the dresses and the more self-consciously futuristic pieces, which displayed something of an overly experimental approach by the designer when the template seemed already nicely set. The last looks of the show displayed discipline once more—the monastic air of an earthbound handmaiden this time, as opposed to the airborne one at the beginning. She seemed the darker and less idealistic sister. If only they had come together sooner.
27 February 2013
"Easy and cute" are not words we ever thought we'd hear Nicola Formichetti utter in regards to his Mugler collection, but nearly two years in, the creative director and his design partner, Sébastien Peigné, have learned a lot about customers, and how big a part relatability plays in making a sale. There was still something futuristic going on in the label's first-ever pre-fall collection. Maybe it was just more down-to-earth.It was certainly far-ranging. Formichetti mentioned the sixties, the eighties, and the nineties (both Lady Miss Kier's nineties and Kurt Cobain's). That contributed to the something-for-everyone feeling: proper skirtsuits in a novelty wool from Japan, separates in a psychedelic print from Mugler's archives, and furs in colors that "look like you can eat them," as well as the pointy-shouldered jackets, perfectos, and body-conscious dresses they've been doing since the beginning.Formichetti said they're working on the Fall collection, and "feeling the sweet vibe." Before the show, he'll be in New York to promote Mugler's new bag range. The star of the collection is the Naboo; his fans will be pleased to note that it's got his sci-fi stamp all over it.
23 January 2013
I Want You, Nicola Formichetti and Romain Kremer's latest show seemed to be saying, for the Mugler army. But despite a new martial insignia—MuglAIR—and a host of what looked like battle-ready outfits, including Velcro-closed "bulletproof" vests, flight jackets, and bombers, there were fewer convincing reasons than usual to enlist this time around. Radioactive neon suits and knits were eye-opening, but much of the military-inspired pieces that accompanied them were silly. Excursions from reality often are, though Formichetti insisted that hyperrealism—"the ability to become somebody else in the digital world," he wrote—was the point. Sifted for its most salable components, the collection has parts, like its tough suiting, that should have a second life at retail. The rest is destined for LARP.
15 January 2013
The current incarnation of the house of Mugler reached its fourth season with this Spring collection. With it there has been a loosening up and, dare it be said, a sense of growing up, making this one of its most accomplished collections.The brand's creative director, Nicola Formichetti, and womenswear designer Sébastien Peigné seem to have relaxed into their roles. At the same time, part of the charm of Mugler—and what has given it such a big online following—has been the readiness of Formichetti to embrace a wide and disparate electronic audience in a democratic fashion. Without a word of a lie, this reviewer once saw a monk—not some club kid pretending to be one—milling around outside the venue at the end of a Mugler show. That's the kind of reach Formichetti has, and the odd devotion he inspires.Today it was the turn of the actual clothing to fall into line with that ease of democracy and wide appeal. The inherited codes and motifs of Thierry Mugler's designs are not the easiest to deal with—especially when the design team had previously been dealing with licensees to try and produce some of the more complicated pieces. This season Peigné has injected an easiness into the designs that still maintains their graphic lines (which appear particularly relevant for this season's interest in graphic style) with a soft, sculptural, human dimension. With its mix of Pop Americana and French Japonisme, there is almost a Claes Oldenburg take on Far Eastern lacquerwork. Take the soft, calf-leather kimono-style tops with the short, origami-folded leather skirts; they are perhaps the most approachable, sensual, and desirable pieces that Peigné has produced for the house. And they are separates, as much of the collection is—a big change from the usual dominance of dominant dresses. Handbags have even been introduced into the collection, one of which can be found carried by Formichetti himself—customized with panda drawings, of course. "I never thought I'd make handbags!" he said after the show. "But it was something I really got into. I started reading all of these handbag blogs, and really saw what they meant to people." There's that democracy again—with just a bit of grown-up savvy.
25 September 2012
Since Nicola Formichetti and Sébastien Peigné took over at Mugler last year, their runway shows have been strictly high-concept. Emphasizing the sales-floor viability of their aesthetic hasn't been the priority. So it was interesting to encounter the pair in a showroom setting, pointing out the similarities and differences between the editorial pieces "for magazines" and their commercial equivalents.Resort is their most relatable work so far. Inspired, they said, by Asia, flags, the Olympics, and the work of New York illustrator Mel Odom, with whom they collaborated on a kissing print, they focused much of their attention on tailoring. High-waisted, full-leg trousers will find buyers, as will little leather Perfecto jackets and boxy, man-size T-shirts. The "runway" versions of the color-blocked flag tees were printed many times over for a rubbery sheen that shows up in the lookbook pics. The "real world" styles were printed less often, which not only lowers the price but makes them softer. Not the kind of details that will earn them Facebook "likes," but vital nonetheless. Something else important to the brand and the bottom line: Formichetti and Peigné will be launching Mugler's handbag range at the show in September.
1 July 2012
Is the digital tide turning? Mugler creative director Nicola Formichetti—the man who practically lived on Twitter, and never had a show he wouldn't live-stream—fought his usual urge this season. "I didn't do any live-streaming, any of those things," he said after the show today. "I just want to concentrate. I want to unplug from Wi-Fi, so I went under the sea." Maybe the tide isn't turning so much as rising. His aquatic theme was expressed in colors (oyster, sand, coral, and seafoam, he called them) and in materials (like an oily leather "jellyfish fabric").The show was an unexpected homage to suiting. Formichetti changed the house tailoring studio to exert more control, and displayed the fruits of their labor with a nearly single-minded focus. (He also gave credit where credit was due, listing the names of the full studio team on his show notes.) The look was sharp, with structured shoulders, no lapels, and attached, cutout tops revealing shards of skin, which had the look of exoskeletons. A quiet echo of Helmut Lang floated over both the tailoring and the cutouts, not least because they were presented at the Espace Commines, Lang's old show space of choice. But Lang had a more elegant rigor, whereas Mugler's slices, pleats, fins, and pockets pointed to a stylist's trickiness. Pare them back, though, and you'd agree with Formichetti that diving into the depths was, in effect, going "back to reality." "It's much more wearable than ever," he added. Indeed, underwater theme or no, the collection felt closer than it ever has to standing on solid ground. And whether Formichetti likes it or not, it's bound to go viral. A woman with a digital camera strapped to her forehead like a spelunker's headlamp (a blogger, presumably) set Formichetti in her sights moments after the show.
26 June 2012
Since getting hired at Mugler over a year ago, creative director Nicola Formichetti and his head of women's design, Sébastien Peigné, have pointed their compasses forward, relying as much on the power of Formichetti's celebrity, and that of his pal Lady Gaga, as the name of the brand. They've had mixed-to-middling results doing so, which must be why tonight's show was their most ambitious yet.It was also their most intimate. For the last two seasons, Mugler's large, elevated catwalks kept the models and the clothes at a remove from their audience. Here, the setup was reversed—the models walked just inches front the front row—and it made a difference. So, too, did the scope of the collection. Formichetti and Peigné divided the show into sections, bookending it with a series of white looks in sculptural cashmere and neoprene with fluted peplums and fox-fur sleeves to start, and mostly sheer black "ninja" outfits to end.The strongest pieces came in between, mostly because they were the result of careful study of the Mugler oeuvre, a not insignificant body of work. Few designers created as potent and recognizable a vocabulary as he did. The superheroine shoulders, the body-loving cut, the optimism inherent to his eighties heyday—they came together best in a yellowy-orange stretch jersey dress. A pair of sheer dresses with their appliqués of python and crocodile will find their way into Gaga's traveling trunks before long, but there was also a trio of white coats that you could imagine seeing in a department store. All in all, a positive step ahead for team Mugler.
28 February 2012
Forget Tinker, Soldier, Spy. The hero of Fall 2012 is the Tailor. Milan's shows suggested that this would be the season of the suit, and the first show in Paris seemed to confirm it. That it was as unlikely a candidate for suiting separates as you're like to find only strengthened the point. Creative director Nicola Formichetti and designer Romain Kremer may have taken their runway bows in baseball jackets, but their Mugler collection emphasized tailoring more than any they've created yet.Backstage, Formichetti explained that he'd been looking at the uniforms of marines, even visiting a base to see them firsthand. That uniforms like these are the roots of men's formal uniforms—the suit, the tux—wasn't lost on him. Neither was the fact that both emphasize theatricality and artifice. T&A, of course, are Formichetti's stock in trade.These weren't your father's suits. They had more in common with the armorlike, body-transforming outfits of superheroes, a particular fascination of the house's namesake. But if the shapes were borrowed from those outside of civilization—who is lonelier than the superhero, unable to mingle among his fellow men?—the materials were taken, in large part, from the idiom of high civility. Formichetti cut jackets from satin, whole suits from jacquard. They played off against the synthetic materials Mugler has employed for seasons: plasticized and rubberized cotton, wool, and neoprene.That interplay made for an interesting dissonance, and the more outré pieces (the glam glitter suits, the rubberized capes) suggested suiting that wouldn't be out of place at a club. "A modern-day man can wear it to the office, then into the street," Formichetti said. The quest to hit that middle ground may explain why some of this collection felt flat. Weird is wonderful in Mugler, and this was a bit light on it.
17 January 2012
Nicola Formichetti's sophomore outing at Mugler began with a video of Lady Gaga singing: "I am a Mugler woman; don't fuck with me. Don't fuck with Mugler. Welcome to Paris; we are Paris." Not the pop superstar's best work, although as usual, it was hard to take your eyes off her on the big screen. Gaga made no repeat performance on the catwalk itself. Without her, the buzz factor wasn't quite the same as last season, which meant the clothes would have to do the talking.Well, did they? We saw an improvement in the quality of the materials. There were no sheer fabrics, so there were fewer nipples on display. And, as far as we could tell, Formichetti and his collaborator, Sébastien Peigné, also mercifully avoided latex. Still, there were plenty of cutouts in all the provocative places, and miles of leg on display thanks to stretch skirts that arced up toward the hips in the front.The looks that will probably charm the front-row party girls Claire and Virginie Courtin-Clarins, whose family backs the label, were the ones that incorporated chartreuse rhinestones. An asymmetric white top over glittery leggings, or a white jumpsuit with flashes of those crystals underneath will both make for sparkly pictures. Of course, it's a narrow little cross section of the world that has the bod and the lifestyle for these clothes. But if Mugler's 169,538 (and counting) Facebook likes are any indication, plenty of other plugged-in people are paying attention. That's probably good enough for the Mugler owners for now.
27 September 2011
The show's the thing at Mugler, the reborn label that's as much an entertainment as a design house, at least on its first few turns out of the gate. For its debut womenswear show in Paris in March, creative director Nicola Formichetti got Gaga to tread the boards, smoke a cigarette, and generally be a perfect media opportunity. But where seasonal shows are a fine venue for theatrics, Resort collections are about sales. And though orders from Fall have been strong, label reps report (and Gaga famously bought in bulk), the task this time around was to translate the runway riot into wearable and desirable clothes.Designer Sébastien Peigné, who runs Mugler's womenswear day-to-day with input from Formichetti, tapped into nature and botany for his first Resort collection. "Nature can be very graphic," he explained, gesturing at the oversize photos of palm fronds that provided inspiration. "You find elements that are very anatomical." The anatomy fit the aesthetic, which was, as it was for Fall, stridently body-con. Cutouts traced the lines of the body, mirroring the arc of the rib cage and the dip of the pelvis. They had a creepy kind of chic, though you wondered if real women would gravitate toward skintight pants that swoop so perilously low. It was the subtlest among the offerings—point-shouldered blouses, lapel-less moto-style jackets, and gauzy day dresses—that seemed likeliest to stand on their own, spectacle or no. Here, Mugler had come back down to earth. And speaking of, no need to fear the towering platforms from Fall. They have given way to partly plastic, pointy pumps inspired, Peigné said, by birds' beaks.
24 June 2011
Godsdowalk among us. Some even sit front-row. On each place at today's Mugler presentation wasBrothers of Arcadia, a mini-magazine of sorts, art directed and styled by Mugler creative director Nicola Formichetti and shot by Branislav Jankic, starring impossibly buff, often entirely nude men, chiseled as Greek gods and modeled after same, frolicking in the surf, entwining themselves in rope, and flexing in every imaginable position. One of those Arcadian brothers—Mr. Centerfold, no less—lolled in his seat, waiting for the show to start. If you looked up and down the long aisle, you could see editor after editor looking from the page to the guy and then back. They ain't seen nothing yet. Tomorrow, an uncensored short film from the same shoot will premiere on XTube, the YouTube of porn. Formichetti called it a "moving mood board." In the mood yet?After the show, Formichetti described the full mix of inspirations that fed this collection: the fabulists of Italian cinema, Fellini and Pasolini; Japanese comics; the heroic, masculine aesthetic of Herb Ritts and Bruce Weber; sport; Greek mythology. "This season, I put more of myself into it," he said. That's a lot of oneself to cram into any collection. Accordingly, Greek gods, muscle-bound frat boys, tattooed punks, and sylph-ish male models all took their turn down the catwalk, often spattered in glitter. The first boy out sported a pair of giant bronzeIron Manarms.Despite all the trappings, though, the collection largely boils down to salable items: stonewashed skinny jeans, pleated shorts, T-shirts, swimwear. Formichetti spoke of doing something "a little more real," but the danger is, without the theatrics, they may also look a little more ho-hum. The strongest bits here coupled wearability with oddity, like the bifurcated tailored jackets that opened the show. Sliced open at the waist, their top and bottom halves held together by a strip of transparent latex shot through with a rip-cord drawstring, they married old and new. So did the green glow that surrounded the show—from the lighting to the collection's palette—an acidic, minty shade. "That green represented the blood of the digital era," Formichetti said. "If this technology has a kind of color, for me it was a neon green." Arcadia, electrified. It was taken directly from the Thierry Mugler archive.
21 June 2011
With the Twitterverse buzzing that Lady Gaga would perform or at the very least walk in her pal Nicola Formichetti's Mugler womenswear debut tonight, extra barriers were set up outside the Gymnase Japy in the 11th arrondissement. But while there were more hangers-on than usual, it wasn't quite the mob scene people were predicting during the long day of fashion shows leading up to the most anticipated collection of the Paris season.Gaga may be famous for being late, but this particular extravaganza got started without much delay. There was barely enough time to take in the set (an elevated runway lined with wooden arches built to resemble a grand cathedral nave)—let alone read the extensive show notes, which detailed Formichetti's many collaborators, including designer Sébastien Peigné, late of Balenciaga—before the lights dimmed and the first model vamped her way down the catwalk, clutching at the church columns. Her outfit: a black pantsuit with the exaggerated, peaked shoulders that design superstar Thierry Mugler made famous in the eighties, accompanied here by a pair of positively towering platform stilettos.There was another pantsuit in radzimir and a trench in patent; at least that's what they looked like—atmospherics being the order of the night, the stage wasn't well enough lit to know for sure. And then, 11 tailored looks into the show, Gaga emerged from behind the photographer's pit in molded black bra, sheer bodysuit, and long black hobble skirt. She sported platinum-blond extensions underneath a triangle hat, and she was smoking—in both the literal and figurative senses. In fact, Gaga had better balance on her platform wedges than many of the professional models did on their own precarious heels.The pop icon came back later for another round all in white—corset, bodysuit, long skirt, and a stole that she flicked and twirled like a whip. In between, her supporting cast appeared in see-through knits and latex pants, furs with the Mugler shoulders, body-stocking dresses with sheer insets on the torso, and pieces of wearable sculpture by Rein Vollenga. Dubbed "post-human android-goddess" in the show notes, the latter sometimes looked not unlike a football player's pads. It all came out at warp speed to Gaga's "Born This Way"—and, like we said, the lighting wasn't great—but it didn't blow you away, either in its affinities to Thierry Mugler's originals or with its future vision.
The collective vibe as Gaga's magic spell dispersed and the crowd shuffled into the night was one of bemused disappointment. Backstage, though, was another story. There, Formichetti was surrounded by the kind of clamoring mosh pit you're more likely to associate with his collaborator. "Fun is making a comeback," he said. "Mugler was a fashion god for me. It was more than fashion, though, it was entertainment." In that regard—and it's not one you can dismiss easily in our wired world—Formichetti and co. nailed it. But will Gaga be available next season? Maybe so. Formichetti also informed us that his biggest fan has already "bought the entire collection in every color."
1 March 2011
Thierry Mugler, this house's mythmaking founder, has long since left the building and settled into a comfortable second act, designing wardrobes for the greatest show on earth. That would be Beyoncé's world tour. A diva worthy of the diva—they're a match made in heaven. And on a stage in front of tens of thousands, Mugler's elaborate concoctions finally look perfectly in scale.The label that still bears his name—now rechristened simplyMugler—is suddenly in the hands of another frantically obsessed-upon man who's made a side career of dressing a larger-than-life diva. He is the stylist Nicola Formichetti, and the diva in question is, of course, Lady Gaga. They—and many others, including designer Romain Kremer; photographer-filmmaker Mariano Vivanco; and a young Canadian with a face covered in skeletal tattoos named Rico—collaborated to create the debut Mugler menswear presentation, which kicked off the shows in Paris with enough buzz to amount to a bang. Editors, stylists, and demimondaines not otherwise in evidence at the men's collections came to a garage on the rue de Turenne to see the spectacle; over a hundred more ticketless acolytes huddled outside, hoping for a glimpse.When the lights went down, a Vivanco film (starring tattooed Rico, alternately clawing at his latex-covered face and enveloped in a billowing veil) and a Gaga soundtrack (an unreleased number from her upcoming album, remixed for the occasion) came up. And then began the stomping parade of slight but furious-looking boys, their hair matted with grease and oil, some of their faces plastered with latex.Their clothes mostly read as new—not old—Mugler. They borrowed certain signatures from the house's expansive vocabulary: the strong shoulders on the jackets, the shorn lapels, something of the originator's talent as a colorist. But they were quieter than Mugler's own brand of bombast, and less witty; they brought out the sinister side of suiting, the darker connotations of uniform. Formichetti's fabrics, especially the man-made neoprene, plastic, nylon, and latex, were sensuously textured but chilly—every other piece shone, but it was light without heat. The silhouettes alternated between painted-on tightness and, via baggy, pleated trousers, super-sized bulk—references to Mugler's preoccupations with superheroes, their mass and their costumes.Pare the looks down to their composite pieces, and it's not clear how revolutionary they'll look.
(Formichetti, backstage, pronounced the collection "wearable" with a touch of wonder.) Some grumbling was heard in the audience: This was styled more than designed, the criticism ran, a moving editorial rather than a fashion show, though ironically, these gripes largely claim from Formichetti's fellow stylists But there were also plenty of onlookers who were galvanized by what they'd seen. There were moments of real beauty, including those that don't necessarily come through via photograph (one reason that Formichetti, like many of his compatriots in fashion's emerging new guard, is so interested in video and film). And for the millions of people without the baggage of the original—and millions is no exaggeration; Lady Gaga alone commands the attention of more than 7 million on Twitter, where she's been relentlessly publicizing the label—this is all a brave new world. Too soon to tell if this project will have legs in the long term, but hard to deny that it took a clamorous first step, and one that gave a tonic jolt to this so-far sleepy season.
18 January 2011
Having previously dressed his glam models in armor-like designs inspired by vehicles (Spring 1992) and robots (Fall 1995 Couture), Thierry Mugler added a touch of Kafka’sMetamorphosisto his approach for Haute Couture Spring ’97. Before the butterfly finale, all manner of winged and hard-shelled creatures made appearances. Mugler’s carapace-like constructions were later referenced by Nicola Formichetti and Sébastien Peigné in theirFall 2012 collectionfor the house of Mugler. Formichetti described the models who wore them as “Mugler ninjas.”
22 January 1997
Thierry Muglerchose the catwalk as the venue for his 20th anniversary party at the Cirque d’Hiver. That it was OTT was given: Mugler was a showman who went on to design costumes for the movies and, yes, the circus. The “scalpel-cut and aerodynamic details” thatVogueonce credited him with were evident in the collection’s tailoring, but the show was memorable more for its performance by James Brown; its cameos by the likes of Tippi Hedren, Patty Hearst, and Veruschka; and its rather liberal use of fetishistic latex. And we haven’t even gotten to the silvery cyborg getup, later famously photographed by Helmut Newton, that was revealed when a model shed her floor-length coat. A frightening and tantalizing image for the dawn of the Internet age, and a fitting end for this list of the nineties’ most unforgettable fashion shows.
25 March 1995
The appearance of the recently divorced Ivana Trump on ThierryMugler’s runway inspired not only “Viva Ivana,” an outrageous and bedazzingly evening ensemble, but a cringe-worthy headline: “Ivana Be a Model.” Although Trump shared the stage with a typically diverse Mugler cast that mixed supermodels, a male porn star, and alt luminaries like Dianne Brill, the real star of the Western-themed show was Mugler’s Harley-Davidson bustier worn with leather shorts by Niki Taylor, which caughtBeyoncé’s attention when it was included in the Met’s “Superheroes” show.Mugler, wroteVoguein 1992, “is the master of specially made goods. All of his theatrical pieces can actually be ordered if you’re willing to pay the price”—and Beyoncé was. Not only was she photographed in the motorcycle bustier, but she hired the Frenchman to create stage costumes and direct parts of her I Am Sasha Fierce tour. “I was very touched that she asked me,” Mugler toldThe Telegraph, “because she could have asked younger people. But she recognized that I was pretty much at the origin of this moment now about superheroes, the structured silhouette and the extreme silhouette, and she wanted that.”
17 October 1991