French fashion designer known for his unique, extravagant style
Manfred Thierry Mugler, a French designer and perfume creator whose flamboyant, architecturally ingenious creations broke new ground in fashion and furnished women with a host of disguises, enabling them to dress as aliens, insects, robots and cars, died Jan. 23 in the Paris suburb of Vincennes. He was 73.
His manager, Jean-Baptiste Rougeot, announced the death in a statement but did not cite a cause. In an Instagram post, Mr. Mugler’s namesake fashion house called him “a visionary whose imagination as a couturier, perfumer and imagemaker empowered people around the world to be bolder and dream bigger every day.”
With his wasp-waisted, broad-shouldered, bodyconscious creations, Mr. Mugler helped define the “power dressing” look of the 1980s, when he began making international headlines through his highly choreographed fashion shows — part rock concert, part Hollywood musical. Supermodels shared the runway with drag queens, singers and occasional porn stars, all dressed in his elaborate designs.
“I never dreamed of being a fashion designer. I wanted to be a director,” Mr. Mugler said in a 2019 interview with T, the New York Times style magazine. “But fashion happened to be a good tool. It was a means of communicating.”
A former ballet dancer who later turned to bodybuilding, Mr. Mugler was fascinated by rigid materials and often worked with latex, leather, rubber and plastic. He found inspiration
in dystopian science fiction, Detroit industrialism and the work of Hollywood costume designers such as Adrian and Edith Head, creating silhouettes that were alternately erotic and grotesque, nostalgic and futuristic.
Some critics called him misogynistic, saying his clothes turned women into hypersexualized cartoon characters. Others accused him of having a fascist aesthetic and an unseemly interest in hard-edge attire. But designers including Alexander McQueen and Jeremy Scott cited him as an influence, and his work dominated European catwalks into the early 1990s, when Mr. Mugler began to turn his attention to perfume. His first fragrance, Angel, became a global blockbuster, with a sweet, candylike scent unlike any other perfume at the time.
Over the years, he dressed celebrities including David Bowie, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Diana Ross and Demi Moore, who wore one of his black floorlength dresses in the 1993 movie “Indecent Proposal.”
His clients also included Ivana Trump, who would order “one suit in 12 colors,” as he told it, and actress Julie Newmar, TV’s original Catwoman. “On a scale from one to 10,” she once said, “in Mugler I feel like an 11!”
Mr. Mugler often turned to animals for inspiration, designing couture gloves that were covered with plastic “porcupine” needles and creating “mink” coats made from layers of chiffon or tulle embroidered with gold. (He refused to work with fur.) Many of his clothes also featured metallic effects, including a gold bodysuit inspired by Fritz Lang’s futuristic 1927 movie “Metropolis.” For his spring show in 1992, he designed a chrome motorcycle bustier complete with breast-mounted rearview mirrors and handlebars that sprouted from the hips.
“Let’s go for it!” he later told the Times, outlining his expansive approach to fashion. “The corset. The pushup bra. Everything!”
He added that conforming to trends and expectations was among the worst sins a designer could commit. “The opposite of good taste,” he said, “is safe.”
Manfred Thierry Mugler was born in Strasbourg, France, on Dec. 21, 1948. His father was a doctor, and his mother was a homemaker whom Mr. Mugler described as “the most elegant woman in town.” She created her own hats and jewelry and was known to personalize her outfits, once adding monkey-fur cuffs to a Pierre Cardin ensemble.
By age 20, he had moved to Paris, where he auditioned for contemporary dance companies but found better luck in fashion. He had started making his own clothes and soon began freelancing for houses in Paris, London and Milan. “I remember I had an old army coat which trailed on the ground and a pair of trousers, dyed in all the colors of the rainbow,” he told Britain’s Independent newspaper. “I would also wear a huge plastic orchid in my lapel and had an acid-green jacket with royal blue buttons in the form of stars.”
He launched his first line, Café de Paris, in 1973. The next year, he created the house of Thierry Mugler with a business partner, Alain Caradeuc.
Mr. Mugler oversaw his own advertising campaigns and photo shoots, in addition to directing short films and the music video for George Michael’s 1992 dance hit “Too Funky,” whichfeatured models such as Tyra Banks and Linda Evangelista walking the runway in his creations. He also worked as a costume designer, shocking some theatergoers with the metal-studded outfits he created for a 1985 ComédieFrançaise production of “Macbeth.”