Photo: Courtesy of Manfred Thierry Mugler on Instagram
The legendary house of Thierry Mugler occupies the space between fashion and myth, manned by a designer so visionary that no less than Beyoncé, David Bowie and Lady Gaga have called upon him to create couture so haute your body temperature rises just looking at pictures of it. In celebration of his iconoclastic career, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has announced plans for Thierry Mugler: Creatures of Haute Couture, slated to open in February 2019. It will be the first solo exhibition of the designer’s work.
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For over two decades, Mugler was a reigning force in fashion, an enfant terrible who defied bourgeois sensibilities with his spectacular looks and magnificent, sometimes almost hour-long runway shows. “I have always been fascinated by the most beautiful animal on the Earth: the human being,” Mugler revealed on the occasion of the exhibition’s announcement. That fascination led him to create clothes which transformed the wearers into futuristic femme fatales, whose superpowers were seduction and self-assurance.
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Still, chances are you haven’t heard a whole lot from the designer lately. In 2003, Clarins, the parent company that purchased the brand in 1997, shuttered the house after huge losses (it would later reopen under Nicola Formichetti, followed by David Koma, who currently creates its collections). Mugler himself completely disappeared from public view, reemerging four years later as Manfred – virtually unrecognisable having embraced bodybuilding and transformed himself into a 240-pound figure rivalling a Tom of Finland sketch. He told the New York Times in 2010 that he did not want to be recognised, explaining, “You don’t want to be reminded that you did this or you did that. It is disturbing.”
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Photo: Courtesy of Manfred Thierry Mugler on Instagram