Manfred Thierry Mugler
Manfred Thierry Mugler was born in Strasbourg, France. At the age of fourteen, he joined the Opera Ballet of Rhin as a ballet dancer where he quickly became enamored by the magic of stage settings and costumes. He began studying at the Strasbourg School of Decorative Arts, however it was in Paris at the beginning of 1967 where he discovered that he could work as a stylist while selling his pieces to the likes of Dorothée Bis and Cacharel. He opened his first boutique "Gudule" and collaborated with the boutique "Granny takes a trip" in London, a temple of eccentricity in Chelsea that dressed Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Lou Reed, David Bowie, John Lennon and Pink Floyd. > Read more
His penchant for long coats and extreme silhouettes became more and more his own, and in 1973 he launched the first collection for his official fashion brand, Café de Paris, before embarking on the creation of his signature label that is characterized by structured, refined and functional garments.
By the end of the 1970s, Manfred Thierry Mugler began photographing his own campaigns in a similar vein to how he designed his couture, like a large, meticulous theater production. His longing for the ideal is what brought the attention of the world to his work.
Mugler has collaborated with many artists, including David Bowie, Mylene Farmer and George Michael, and also created the costumes for the Comédie Française's production of Shakespeare's "Macbeth" which was presented at the opening of the Avignon Festival of theater in 1985.
In 1988 he published his first book of photography entitled "Thierry Mugler, Photographer". Mugler has also directed short films and video advertisements, most notably the "Gauloises Adventures", which was the first television advertisement for Gauloises cigarettes. In 1992, he launched what is now considered a classic fragrance in the world of perfume, "Angel". For the twentieth celebration of the Mugler house in 1995, he hosted an exemplary fashion show at the Cirque d'Hiver with James Brown attending as a special guest, where he united generations of models from Carmen Dell'Orefice and Jerry Hall to Hitchcock's muse Tippi Hedren, as well as Kate Moss and Claudia Fischer in attendance.
In 2002, Mugler took a break from fashion in order to concentrate on theater and film production, in which his first creation was a collaboration with Cirque de Soleil entitled "Zumanity".
In 2008, he designed costumes for Beyonce for her "I am..." tour, as well as the direction for many theater productions. In 2013 he developed the Mugler Follies, a new theater piece presented for two years at Le Comédia in Paris. The following year he produced the performance of "The Wyld" at Friedrichstadr-Palast in Berlin which ran until 2016.
In 2019, the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts held the exhibition, "Thierry Mugler: Couturissime" which drew in more than 290,000 visitors. The exhibition continued in Europe at the Kunsthalle in Rotterdam in October 2019, and then moved to the Kunsthalle de Munich in 2020. In November 2019, at the time of the launch of his new book, "Manfred Thierry Mugler, Photographer" from the Éditions de la Martinière, the artist presented his first exhibition of photographs at Polka Gallery in Paris, France.
© Julien Berger
