French fashion designer Manfred Thierry Mugler, 73, has passed away. The cause and place of death have not been announced.
Although he stepped away from the fashion industry in 2002, he remained a popular figure in the industry. Celebrities such as Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian, and Cardi B have all sought out to work with him. Mugler’s general “type” was femme. He preferred silhouettes that were the inverted triangle with exaggerated power shoulders and defined hourglass shape.
Mugler was born in Strasbourg in 1948, went on to study at the School of Fine Arts and danced with the opera there. He moved to Paris in 1966, where he worked for other designers and as a photographer. He began his label the following year and quickly became known for the forcefulness of his cuts and vision. Vogue editor Mary Russell first introduced Mugler in 1977 to readers as this:
“Thierry Mugler is a loner. He will take off for Africa or India for months at a time, alone, with one pair of jeans in a sack. An ex-dancer with a completely individual feeling for shape and color, he uses his sense of theater and ballet to work out the themes for his shows. The clothes, however, can be pulled apart and, when seen on racks in his showroom, are the most sage and real pieces one could ever want. For his new boutique on La Place des Victoires, he designed the mannequins and jewelry – everything very luxurious but brut (gold threads in rough linen, for example). Thierry and [his fellow designer] Claude Montana speak to each other every day but never discuss a collection.”
Mugler’s work in fashion intersected with Surrealism, sci-fi, and fetish. Critics suggested his work was sexist or crossing over into costume, but it may also be seen as empowering. The possibilities of transformation were relative to Mugler’s work and life. In the time he stepped away from fashion, he went back to using his birth name, Manfred. He also altered his appearance through bodybuilding and surgery.
In 2019, 45 years after he began his first designs under his own name, a “Thierry Mugler: Couturissime” was staged in Canada. It premiered at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris last September. “What he did is so unique; he wrote fashion history collection after collection without knowing it,” said curator Thierry-Maxime Loriot at the time. “It’s almost like it’s not about fashion – Mugler didn’t follow trends or reference fashion history. It’s festive and immersive: he created his own world.”
He will be missed by those all over.
