French fashion designer Manfred Thierry Mugler has died at the age of 73, reports The Daily Beast.
Over his decades-long career, Mugler dressed a galaxy of stars—from legendary luminaries like David Bowie, George Michael, and Cindy Crawford to more modern giants like Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, and Rihanna.
The designer was also an icon in his own right. Born in 1948 as Thierry Mugler, he started out as a ballet dancer in Paris and never lost the sense of ephemerality that performing gave him.
“You can be vomiting, you can detest who you are, detest the world, detest every single thing, and the next moment you are in the light and you glow,” he told Elle in 2017. “You forget everything, and you are just flying. When you’re onstage, you are someone else.”
Mugler launched his label in 1974 and had ascended to the height of glamour by 1992. “My clothes are sexy and avant-garde and as I wrote and said in Robert Altman’s Prêt a Porter, ‘It’s all about getting a great fuck, darling,’” he told Vice in 2010.
Gifted with an innate theatrical flourish, Mugler’s style was equal parts audacious and sexy. Archival pieces from his wild ’80s and ’90s runway shows achieved a timeless quality. One vintage 1995 dress was resurrected by Cardi B for an appearance at the 2019 Grammy Awards.
“From the moment I saw it, I knew it was going to be a debatable moment, some people would love it and some people would hate it and that’s everything we’re about when it comes to fashion,” the rapper’s stylist told WWD after the awards ceremony. “It’s meant to create a conversation.”
With his unique blend of the flamboyant and the fetishistic, Mugler was known for incendiary shapes that transformed his models into machines, affixing them with robotic limbs or bustiers with motorcycle handles protruding from them. He dreamed up more than one iconic look, including Demi Moore’s little black dress in Indecent Proposal and the entirety of a Cirque du Soleil show, “Zumanity,” a bombastic, animalistic cabaret.