All Photos By Gail
Most fashion is meant to be worn, but Thierry Mugler’s designs often look like they were engineered as stand-alone pieces of art. I photographed this spectacular look when I visited Thierry Mugler: Couturissime at the Brooklyn Museum in 2022, but it took me this long to take a deep dive into what this design is all about. Dressed entirely in black, this figure has an impossibly sculpted silhouette: exaggerated shoulders, a dramatically cinched waist, sharply defined hips, glossy pointed heels and a fantastical headpiece that makes the wearer look less like a woman getting dressed and more like a character from a futuristic graphic novel. This is all very much Mugler’s territory.
Originally trained as a ballet dancer, the French designer had an unusually intimate understanding of the human body and used that knowledge to manipulate the silhouette into something powerful and almost architectural. His inspirations ranged from science fiction and comic-book superheroines to medieval armor, industrial design and futuristic automobiles. His celebrated fembot creations could look part robot, part superhero and part fashion fantasy.
From his prêt-à-porter Fall/Winter 1995-96 collection (Anniversaire des 20 ans), the look comprises a Grain de poudres wool suit, riding-coat jacket with gloved sleeves, coupled with a draped, microskirt and vinyl tights.
Even the accessories became part of the fantasy. Mugler famously translated automotive forms into fashion, creating pieces inspired by fenders, radiator grilles and tail fins. In other words, a handbag didn’t necessarily have to look like a handbag — it could look like a piece of machinery from some glamorous future. In this case, the little purple-lined bag is a Thierry Mugler Coffin Bag, or sac à main cercueil created specifically for Mugler by Hélène Nepomiatzi, a French accessories designer who collaborated with the designer in the late 1980s.
The Brooklyn Museum’s Couturissime exhibition brought together nearly 130 looks, accessories, photographs, sketches and other material spanning Mugler’s extraordinary career, and was organized around his obsessions — including glamour, fantasy, science fiction, nature and eroticism — rather than simply presenting a chronological parade of clothes.
What I can’t resist about this particular look is that it perfectly illustrates Mugler’s ability to turn fashion into character design. The severe black silhouette, mask-like face and fantastical headpiece suggest a superheroine from a future that never quite arrived. It’s clothing, but it is also sculpture, architecture and storytelling — and that’s what makes Thierry Mugler’s work so much fun to look at. After all, when your clothes make you look like you could either conquer the world or pilot a spaceship, you know you’ve entered a territory beyond ordinary fashion.
