French designer Thierry Mugler, who reigned over fashion in the 1980s, died this Sunday at the age of 73 of “natural death”, announced his press officer Jean-Baptiste Rougeot.
“We have the immense sadness to inform you of the death of Mr. Manfred Thierry Mugler which occurred on Sunday January 23, 2022”, is it also written in a press release published on the official Facebook account of the creator. ” That his soul rests in peace. »
According to Jean-Baptiste Rougeot, the death of Thierry Mugler occurred unexpectedly. The great couturier still had projects and was to announce new collaborations at the start of the week, he said.
“High school student, I was pathetic in Strasbourg”
Born in Strasbourg in December 1948, Thierry Mugler was a pupil of the Fustel de Coulanges high school and then of the School of Decorative Arts (HEAR). But he felt cramped in Strasbourg, as he told us in 1995 in an interview: “High school student, I was miserable in Strasbourg”, he told us at the time, returned to the Alsatian capital. to inaugurate a boutique in his name, rue de l’Outre. He had also attended the Odyssée cinema for the screening of the film of his 1995 parade at the Cirque d’Hiver, in the presence of Catherine Trautmann, mayor at the time, and his friend Jack Lang.
After this restrained youth, he arrived in Paris in 1968, at the age of 20, then created his own label “Café de Paris” in 1973, before a year later founding the company “Thierry Mugler”. Its structured and sophisticated silhouettes quickly imposed themselves.
Shows around its collections
A director at heart, he had organized spectacular public presentations of his creations. “I have always thought that fashion was not enough on its own and that it had to be shown in its musical and theatrical environment”, Thierry Mugler has often said. For the tenth anniversary of his house, in 1984, he organized the first public fashion presentation in Europe, at the Zenith, in front of 6,000 people, like a rock concert.
For the 20th anniversary, the creator chooses the Cirque d’hiver. 75 stars and models, from Naomi Campbell and Jerry Hall to American heiress Patricia Hearst, actress Tippi Hedren and even James Brown in the finale emerging from a giant star to the rhythms of “Sex Machine”.
He had also embarked on the creation of perfumes, his “Angel” model being so successful that it will compete for first place in sales with the mythical No5 of Chanel.
An exhibition in Paris
After leaving fashion, the couturier has also pushed the art of metamorphosis to the point of becoming unrecognizable, body and face, by resorting to intensive bodybuilding and cosmetic surgery, while engaging in meditation and yoga. “The first emergency was to reclaim my body, exhausted by my years of dancing and sewing, like a rebirth, a way of erasing the past”, explained the couturier, claiming “(his) new bodily home”, and demanding that he henceforth be called “Manfred T. Mugler”.
Since September, it has been featured in an exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris entitled “Thierry Mugler, Couturissime”, designed by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA). It was launched at the end of September, when Fashion Week returned to the parades after being confined during the pandemic. A symbol for the one who was the pioneer of the parade show.