Fashion loses one of its imaginative protagonists; a true inventor, who had shaped a world of pure, wild fantasy. He died on Sunday 23 January at the age of seventy-three – the causes are still unknown – Manfred Thierry Mugler, prince of couture as a metamorphic and glamorous glorification of the body as well as the inventor of Angel, the first gourmand perfume with cocoa notes launched in the 1990s and has remained firmly in the top 5 of the best-selling fragrances ever since.
To see Couturissime in Paris (until April)
The traveling exhibition Couturissime that celebrates his work is open until April in Paris at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs: for once the recognition is not posthumous. In all the years of his activity in fashion, which had begun in the liberated and libertarian seventies after abandoning the ambitions of becoming a dancer, he had signed Thierry Mugler.
The sold brand is Il Cirque du Soleil
At the beginning of the 2000s, when the brand was sold – which is still active – the first name had reappeared, while the body became more and more farcical and parody in the Hulk musculature, and Manfred Thierry Mugler was born, dedicating himself to other activities, such as create costumes for Cirque du Soleil. It did not stop. It was a continuous flow.
Reinvention is the theme that runs through Mugler’s life and work: the desire to materialize exaggerated visions found concreteness through the painstaking work of the atelier. Insect women, poodle women, bustiers like the fronts of motorbikes and cars, women like classic statues, bionic and alien women, always with breasts, waist and hips with cartoonish curves are just some of her fantasies. He started from the body and exaggerated its forms to glorify it with skilful constructions, colors, decorations. The visionary ability to imagine another world had no limits. And never, not even in the moments of the most punitive and renouncing rowing, did he fail in the glamorous creed.
Power dressing in fantasy declination
It can be counted among the inventors of the power dressing, all giant shoulders, squeezed lives, high heels, but Mugler expressed his power in a fantastic way instead of business. Her own body was a fantastic tale, constructed through imagination and will. It disappears at a time when fashion, emerging from the pandemic tunnel, rediscovers seduction and high-volume expression, and therefore re-evaluates it.