Mugler spring/summer 2021 Part 02: A transparent take on Thierry

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Apr 1, 2021

The invitation for Mugler spring/summer 2021 Part 02 featured an athletic lass (or was it a guy?) in leotard and striped tights, crouched at a starting block, head covered in a high-tech warrior helmet.

 
Capturing the DNA of the house - a blend of robotic high tech and sculptural chic. As did the seven-minute long video, unveiled on the evening of March 31, that opened with the house’s creative director Casey Cadwallader embracing Bella Hadid.
 
Major league catwalkers, Irina Shayk, Alek Wek and the ever blonde Soo-Joo Park strode about in Casey’s vision of Mugler – techy cut-out tops; denim pants with multiple seams and ribs; a super-heroine silhouette; and extensive use of semi-sheer fabrics.

Shot in semi darkness, they danced, emoted and looked fierce, while continually being put into reverse motion, in a video directed by Torso.
 
Just like the house’s founder, Cadwallader’s fashion requires a seriously fit body to work.

 As in Mugler’s previous video, the soundtrack featured Shygirl. Part 01 opened with an avatar, based on Bella Hadid, attired in cut-out top and pants so tight she could barely walk across a make-believe pond in a setting worthy of one of de Chirico’s happier dreams; in actual fact the Noisy-le-Grand post-modernist district one spots on the highway en route to Euro Disney, east of Paris. An inclusive cast striking aggressive and statuesque poses before the urban sculpture and famed vertical Camembert central building, designed by Manuel Nunez Yanowsky.

Craftily surreal, the cast eventual grew into giants who caress Paris monuments, in a video directed Florian Joahn. The avatar even becomes an online centaur, or rather centauress, on the Palais de Chaillot at the Trocadéro. The house’s founder was, of course, famous for his own iconic book, 'Thierry Mugler, Photographer,' that featured valkyries perched amid the great Seven Sisters skyscrapers of Moscow that Stalin had built to express Soviet ambition. Thierry, to his credit, was one of the first openly gay superstar designers, who had the courage to use transvestites and transsexuals in his show long before the very term 'LGBT' began to be used in the late '80s.   So, to his credit, the house’s creative director Casey Cadwallader is fully in sync with the Mugler DNA, and coherent with its sculptural aesthetic of wasp waists and mega-shoulder silhouettes.

Moreover, if any designer loved a good party it was Thierry. As those of us who feted his 20th anniversary can attest; inside the Cirque d’Hiver in 1995 with James Brown playing into the wee hours amid muscle queens in jockstraps; icons Tippi Hedren and Patty Hearst and a raft of supermodels.   One has to admit that Cadwallader has made this house relevant for the 21st century. Even if his inspiration was more avatar than Thierry, who always harked back to Adrian, and the great days of Hollywood.