Latex, one-hour fashion shows and amphibious women: the great legacy that Thierry Mugler leaves behind in fashion
Thierry Mugler with his muse, Jerry Hall, in 1995. Photo: Getty
The Frenchman who revolutionized the catwalks in the eighties and nineties has died at the age of 73. We review a legacy that marked an era.
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"If I were given a penny for each dress inspired by my designs, I would be a billionaire…". This is how Thierry Mugler synthesized in an interview with S Moda his influence in an industry that he stirred up with his daring and erotic designs that created a school in the eighties and nineties. The French designer has just passed away at the age of 73 "of natural causes", according to the statement, leaving a legacy that lives on. Celebrities like Cardi B, Lady Gaga or Kim Kardashian do not stop rescuing their archival designs on red carpets and events as proof of the validity of their creations.
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Born in Strasbourg in 1948 into a bourgeois family, Manfred Thierry Mugler, who in recent times preferred to be called by his first name, rebelled against his environment at a very young age. At the age of 14, he left home and started working in a pizzeria to survive. Later he would arrive at the Strasbourg opera as a classical dancer.
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After spending six years dancing, she moved to Paris and discovered the trade of stylist. And the rest is history. He began to design his own creations, revolutionizing the industry with his vinyl and latex garments. "I dignified materials that could only be found in sex shops," he told this magazine. In the image, Sharon Stone wears one of her erotic creations in 1992.
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One of his great muses was the model Jerry Hall, star of many of his fashion shows, who perfectly embodied his aesthetic ideal. In the image, together in 1995.
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His designs turned women into insects, aliens or futuristic androids. And, although some accused him of sexualizing them to the point of reducing them to sexual objects, art historian Linda Nochlin, an expert in analyzing female representation in art, assured in 1994 that Mugler's bet was so extreme that his women "did not They were not sexual objects, but sexual subjects".
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A contemporary of Azzedïne Alaia, Claude Montana or Jean-Paul Gaultier, alongside whom he poses in this image, Mugler considered himself more influenced by designers such as the Californian Rudi Gernreich than by the French of his generation. "I was the one who opened the ban. They just followed me," he came to affirm about his professional colleagues.
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The Frenchman was one of the pioneers in conceiving his shows as shows that transcended fashion. In 1984, for example, he brought together 6,000 people at the Zénith stadium in Paris, creating a macro-event in which more than half of the attendees paid for the ticket out of his own pocket. Nor was it strange that their shows lasted an hour and a half.
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All the great supermodels of the 1990s paraded for him. From Linda Evangelista (in the image for her autumn-winter 1995 collection, one of the most remembered and applauded) to Kate Moss through Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell or Eva Herzigova.
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Rossy de Palma and Pedro Almodóvar, during one of his fashion shows in 1991. The Spanish actress collaborated on many occasions with Mugler and even walked for him, becoming one of his muses.
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His collaboration with the world of music was also very prolific. Before she dressed Beyoncé on the 2008 tour, one of her most recent and remembered collaborations, David Bowie, Madonna or Céline Dion wore her designs.
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Although he always wanted to escape from the commercial, one of his great milestones was his line of perfumery, produced and developed by Clarins. Specifically, Angel perfume was one of the most revolutionary and best-selling fragrances during the 1990s.
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Today Angel continues to be a bestseller. In the image, the perfume campaign starring Georgia May Jagger.
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Tight silhouettes, asymmetries, exposed female forms and the iconography of the 'femme fatale' of classic cinema defined their proposals. He himself baptized these women as Glamazon, a concept that would later be claimed by drag queen RuPaul.
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In 2002 he retired from the forefront of fashion and began a physical change that made him difficult to recognize in recent times. Cosmetic surgery transformed his face and bodybuilding, his body. The purpose was precisely that no one could identify him, as he confessed to The New York Times in 2010. "I don't want anyone to remind me of what I did," he said about his work.
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After almost two decades retired from fashion, in which he dedicated himself to other artistic projects such as photography or costume design for shows such as Zumanity from El Circo del Sol, the designer returned to design the wet effect dress that Kim Kardashian wore it to the 2019 Met Gala. She had already explored that wet-inspired aesthetic in her spring 1998 couture collection.
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At the 2019 Grammy Awards, Cardi B not only made history by being the first woman to win best rap album solo, but also by how she went to collect it. She did it with this haute couture design that Thierry Mugler presented in 1995, in his most remembered show, Cirque d'hiver. A model in black velvet and pink satin that opened at the hips, like a woman emerging from a shell, and was inspired by The Birth of Venus.
Sequel's mom's mothers day gift - @LillyPulitzer shelly jelly's, wine glasses, white wine, how to display? http://lockerz.com/s/99564252
— Little Miss Sat May 07 15:32:32 +0000 2011
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The butterfly dress that she presented in haute couture with Jerry Hall as a model for the 1997 Les Insectes collection has also been rescued over time. By Jennifer López, Irina Shayk or Beyoncé, who wore it to shoot the Diva video clip in 2009.
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His archival designs have also been revived by such famous faces as Lady Gaga, whose stylist in the 2010s, Nicola Formichetti, was also Mugler's creative director at the time. In the image, part of his spring-summer 2012 collection for the firm.
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Mugler was close to his models. Here, with Carla Bruni at a post-show party in Paris in 1991.
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In May 1986, with Andy Warhol. She would cultivate a friendship based on admiration. Shirley Malmann, in Paris fashion week in 1999, would parade in one of her collections dressed and made up as a Warholian work, in tribute to the artist, who died in 1987.
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Naomi Campbell in his spring-summer 1992 show. She was one of his fetish models: two years later, she returned to the catwalk for him holding her mother's hand.
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Mugler made sure his shows were real spectacles by taking care not only of the collection, but also of the set design, lighting and styling. Without a doubt, his showmanship, which shook the industry and created a school, will be remembered forever.
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