Thierry Mugler gets the outlandish retrospective he deserves

By Kish Lal

It’s difficult to distill the works of a visionary like Manfred Thierry Mugler. But the latest iteration of his touring retrospective, viewable now through May 2023 at the Brooklyn Museum, combines his love for celebrity, glamor, weirdos, fetish wear, and fantasy, all adding up to a breathtaking love letter to the late French designer.

Earlier versions of “Thierry Mugler: Couturissime” — which debuted in Montreal in 2019, before making stops in Munich, Rotterdam and Paris — were staged before Mugler’s death at 73 in January 2022. The exhibit’s arrival in New York marks its first posthumous showing and its final stop.

The opening night party was a spectacle that Mugler himself wouldn’t have wanted to miss. The celebrity-studded event brought out stars from Kylie Jenner — who arrived wearing a black gown from Thierry Mugler’s fall 1995 couture collection, accompanied by current Mugler creative director Casey Cadwallader — to Julia Fox, former Club Kids Dianne Brill and Amanda Lepore, Laverne Fox, Marc Jacobs, Lourdes Leon, The Blonds, Richie Shazam, Leomie Anderson, Tyler Mitchell, and so many more.

“I was lucky enough to model and be his muse for over nine years,” Brill — an Andy Warhol muse and, today, a legendary figure in fashion in her own right — tells Brooklyn Magazine. “I was there during his process and growth as an artist. He had a way of tapping into the fantasy version of yourself and creating it on you.”

Some of the items on display at the Brooklyn Museum had only ever been worn by her on the runway, she says. And in a lot of ways, this tribute to him in Brooklyn feels like something he would have delighted in.

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“Building on the Brooklyn Museum’s history of celebrating the trailblazing French couturiers Jean Paul Gaultier in 2013, Pierre Cardin in 2019 and Christian Dior in 2021, we’re thrilled for our audiences to experience ‘Thierry Mugler: Couturissime’,” Matthew Yokobosky, senior curator of fashion and material culture at the museum, said in a statement.

“Originally a ballet dancer, Thierry Mugler was a designer who intimately understood the mechanics of the body and had extensive knowledge of materials and production. He used this expertise to create empowering visions for all people, especially women, including his archetypal superheroine silhouettes.”

Courtesy Brooklyn Museum 

An Angel and an Alien
Mugler moved to the U.S. in 1998, but not before rocketing to fame after launching his eponymous fashion house in Paris in the 1970s. His work was known for an embrace of the avant-garde and hyperfeminine, imbued with theatrical and architectural elements. Mugler would go on to have his own love affair with New York: Here he lived in Chelsea, created the costume design for Zumanity, the risqué version of Cirque du Soleil, which showed at the New York-New York hotel in Las Vegas. And it was here, in 2005, that he launched his fragrance, Alien.

While the touring exhibition has already been seen by thousands of people around the world, what’s unique to Brooklyn Museum is a room devoted to fragrance in celebration of 30 years of Angel — a scent “so delectable,” Mugler once said, “ you want to eat it.” It took 13 years and more than 600 trials to perfect the formula. And in a room towards the end of the exhibit floats a mannequin depicting an angel draped in Mugler couture. It’s a deliciously over the top dedication to a perfume which is just that.

Next door, in an adjoining dimly lit, black-tiled room, the strapless illuminated evening gown used in the first Angel ad campaign is on display. In this part of the exhibit, littered with bottles of Mugler perfume in glass cases, the air still has the faintest hint of the sickly sweet caramel scent that mesmerized three decades ago.

Everything about “Thierry Mugler: Couturissime” is outrageously camp, so much so that even a fashion novice should be tickled by the outré costumes, each one punctuated with a wry wink. His ironic perspective on the erotic is displayed from the very beginning of the exhibit, especially in a gown once worn by model Violeta Sanchez, which he dubbed a “derriere decollete” — basically, butt cleavage — from his 1995-96 collection. Then there are fine gowns accentuated by nipple piercings, lashings of latex and pictures that feel stripped right out of Helmut Newton’s private archives.

The Incandescence of Lady Macbeth (Courtesy Brooklyn Museum)

But nothing is more theatrical than “The Incandescence of Lady Macbeth,” a 3-D hologram projection featuring an elaborate gold cage dress worn by the doomed title character in the 1985 Comedie-Francaise production. (Mugler was given the biggest budget in the history of the Comedie-Francaise since its founding in 1680 to create more than 70 costumes for “The Tragedy of Lady Macbeth.”)

Mugler’s talent wasn’t just designing beautiful clothes, it was how he could speak through his designs. Visitors who stroll through the nine rooms, can’t miss his love for the female form. Some of his creations, like a metal fembot from 1996, are ripped right out of the pages of a sci-fi novel. Elsewhere, his work pokes at the myth of the perfect body with an almost punk rock glee. Whether he’s fantastically adding plastic peplum hip bones to pant suits, creating dresses that turn the wearer into a leopard print bird, or using alien-like headpieces, his playful absurdity clashes against fashion’s maligned ideals.

Courtesy Brooklyn Museum

Brill, who attended the Paris exhibit with Mugler, says she can feel how the energy has shifted at the new Brooklyn show following his passing. But his everlasting impact is undeniable.

“It was one of my life’s pleasures to have been seen and presented as Dianne Brill through the maestro’s eyes. I’ve never felt more gorgeous than prowling the catwalks in Mugler creations,” she says. “Everyone should feel that essence, that feeling when they walk through this exhibit too.”

Courtesy Brooklyn Museum