Once defining ‘90s fashion, Mugler is now a Gen-Z super-brand
Mugler’s creative director Casey Cadwallader discusses reinstating the French brand’s original status as a fashion disrupter.
Casey Cadwallader’s energy feels rambunctious when he Zooms in from Paris, his silhouette framed by 19th-century rooftops outside his Galerie Royale office. At the time of his interview, it’s been a month since Mugler’s latest show, autumn/winter ’22/’23, a nearly half-hour rave-style extravaganza which currently sits at 30 million views on Instagram. It’s morning, and by his visibly peppy demeanour, you can tell the brand’s creative director is still feeling the buzz.
“I must say, it’s taken me a little while to recover from it. Mentally, I think it was full of so much risk to do that, it was a real challenge,” he says.
At the show, models Adut Akech Bior, Paloma Elsesser and Amber Valletta, as well as Venezuelan musician Arca and viral comedian Ziwe Fumudoh, wore pieces made of leather, lace and Lycra, which rendered them modern vixens, and were trailed by cameras on dollies broadcasting their every move to TikTok and Instagram. It was a celebration of confidence that encapsulated Cadwallader’s liberated design approach while mining the energy of the brand’s catwalks in the 1990s, which have earned retrospective popularity due to their visual extravagance in today’s online age. Even Cadwallader wasn’t immune to his own spectacle.
“It’s the first time I watched the show myself, live … I was supposed to be fixing the looks, [but] I ended up sort of turning around and watching,” he says. “Kind of naughty.”
In the spirit of Manfred Thierry Mugler, the brand’s founder who passed away early last year, Cadwallader has been feeling rebellious. The autumn/winter ’22/’23 show took place 10 months after other collections of the same season, coinciding with haute couture spring/summer ’23 instead. Cadwallader chose to show this collection in line with the pieces dropping in store, similar to Thierry Mugler – famous for showing whenever he wanted.
“There are a lot of rules in the world that aren’t that serious, and then there are a lot of rules in the world that are about respect and conviviality that are important,” Cadwallader says with a focused stare. “There’s something about Mugler being a little bit of an outlier in not needing to conform. I think that’s what Manfred really laid out, and I really want to appreciate that and to keep pushing it. I don’t want to fall in line and just become another fashion house – I want Mugler to be a bit of an oddball, honestly.”
The creative director’s anomalous approach can be traced to his design-obsessed childhood in New Hampshire.
“I wanted to be a jeweller when I was really young, and then I wanted to be an automotive designer, then I wanted to be a furniture designer, then I went to architecture school, then I wanted to be a fashion designer – whew!” the 43-year-old says.
“All of those things were my interests.” He finished an architecture degree before pursuing fashion, with stints on design teams at Loewe, Narciso Rodriguez and at Acne Studios preceding his appointment at Mugler in December 2017. Cadwallader was quickly noted for his structural approach; the sharp blazers from his autumn/winter ’18/’19 show would eventually become a defining silhouette. An obsession with technology has seen the designer push for innovation, even down to tiny details.
“I’ve always been a bit of a scientist. The fact that a zipper pull can have a rubber texture on your fingers so that you grip it better, those are things I really get into,” he says.
One of the standout pieces from the season, a 3D-printed chrome bra made with scientific body scanning for a perfect fit, was a full-circle moment for Cadwallader. “When I was in architecture school, the thesis I wanted to do was about a fashion designer who 3D-scanned their clients and made clothes for them, and my teacher wouldn’t let me do it. And now, I [get] to do that,” he laughs. “It’s a funny thing, in life you’re always trying to get back to the big ideas you had when you were young and make them possible.”
Architectural lines of thought – illusory expansion through design, and the techniques that make it happen – are key in Cadwallader’s practice. His signature cut-out Lycra, which wraps around the body in the form of dresses and catsuits, is an example of beauty meeting practicality.
“On anyone, Lycra both highlights your curves and elongates your body. It tends to make your legs look longer, your hips look curvier,” posits Cadwallader. “It’s really about a graphic pattern being applied to the body.”
Now, his second-skin work has developed to feature crystal mesh and lace; Kylie Jenner wore a gown-style catsuit made from the latter at Paris fashion week last October. “I really don’t naturally like lace; it’s not my thing,” Cadwallader says. “I took it as a challenge, like, ‘Okay, why don’t you like it? What would make you like it?’ Then I really jumped into trying to work with it.”
Given Mugler’s concert-like presentations, it’s natural he designs for superstars familiar with public glare. Cadwallader crafted three looks for Beyoncé’s On The Run II concert tour in 2018, as well as the final number worn by Dua Lipa on her Future Nostalgia world tour: a red and silver catsuit adorned with thousands of crystals.
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“It’s a funny thing, in life you’re always trying to get back to the big ideas when you had when you were young and make them possible”
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“I think the most important thing is to know that person and what they are looking for in that moment,” Cadwallader says. “With someone like Dua, I knew she was really cool about it, and was like ‘I want you to do the finale look’ – I was like, ‘What, me?!’ I knew it had to be a dazzler, and that I wanted to really go for it. She needs to sing, she needs to move, she needs to dazzle at the same time.”
Cadwallader may work to empower his muses, but each of them – from Hunter Schafer, the new face of Mugler’s Angel Elixir fragrance, to Chloë Sevigny, for whom he designed a wedding outfit last year – embodies a distinct, assertive confidence. Ultimately, he won’t cast someone if they have the look, but he doesn’t jibe with their personality. For him, it needs to be the full package.
“The variety the world has is what’s so exciting to me,” he says, visibly exhilarated. “I can get really into a classical singer, and I can get really excited by the way a hip-hop star dances, because the magic is within their craft, and they’re the master.”
Where Jerry Hall, Linda Evangelista and pioneering trans model Connie Fleming were Thierry Mugler’s uncompromising female muses, Cadwallader is keeping the legacy alive through today’s liberated stars. Designing custom pieces for celebrity clients provides the same kind of thrill as being a couturier. “I would love to do couture, but as a house, we’re growing up, getting bigger, trying to build. To jump into doing couture the way everyone else does it isn’t maybe necessarily the correct option,” he says. “For me, Dua is couture, Chloë Sevigny is couture, and it makes me just as satisfied,” he explains.
Thierry Mugler founded his brand in 1973 but came to global prominence in the 1990s, when his dramatic designs and diverse casting challenged minimalism and the age of narrowly defined beauty in the (mostly white) waif. His 2003 retirement signalled the end of an era, but the brand’s ready-to-wear business was an unsung success behind the more striking glamour. “I’m often referencing [old ready-to-wear] and people don’t even know, because they don’t think Mugler had a huge poplin shirt business, but he did. He had his own tailoring factory outside of Paris that made tailored men’s and women’s jackets,” Cadwallader says.
Nonetheless, as Mugler’s fifth creative director, Cadwallader is angling for impact. Unlike recent predecessors Nicola Formichetti and David Koma, the collision of Mugler’s attention-grabbing approach with the age of TikTok has furthered its reach exponentially. “If we’re going to try to resurrect a sleeping beauty, you don’t come out with some ‘real’ trousers and shirts – you have to kind of stir the pot,” he says.
Cadwallader may stir, but his approach is also rooted in thoughtfulness and considered intentions. He cast curve models as early as 2019 – four years before today’s conversations about size representation on runways – and pushes for inclusivity carrying on Thierry’s legacy. In a poignant moment, he received approval from the famously brusque Mr Mugler only a few months before his passing.
“We spoke after the second runway film [in October 2021, for autumn/winter ’21/’22] and he was saying, ‘I really see Mugler in that. I’m starting to see it.’ For me, that was the most important part … he was starting to recognise and was seeing the spark, to me [it] was so meaningful,” Cadwallader recounts. “He gave me a big hug at the end – a big giant man hug – and it was really nice. I felt approved.”
Over the past five years, Cadwallader says he’s loosened up, and the change is visible in his work. He describes his 38-year-old self in 2017 as a little bit more serious and intellectual, first noticeable in autumn/winter ’18/’19’s more conservative dresses. Comparing his debut collection to his most recent is to witness a sense of abandon that’s reminiscent of the muses he dresses.
“Mugler is there if you’re feeling like you maybe want to try being [badass], and it’s there to help give you a little push into the pool. I’ve seen it many times – I’ve had people say, ‘Oh, I’m not a Mugler girl, this is too much’ and then they get in it, and they’re like, ‘Hello, me!’” he says, now with a grin. “I watch that happen and I think, ‘Mm-hmm, you like this little side of you.’”
This article appears in the May issue of Vogue Australia, on sale now.
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