October 3, 2025 |
A new era for the Mugler woman is unleashed. Miguel Castro Freitas brought the fashion pack down to an underground carpark for his debut show for the house. This is his first time in the creative director seat after previously leading teams at Dior, Dries Van Noten and, most recently, Sportmax. There is so much so much you can mine from the world of Manfred Thierry himself, whose sex-driven couture was bombastic and untouchably fierce. Fusing fetish with fantasy, his signature-brand of power dressing often saw his models stalk the catwalk as aliens, robots and motorcycles.
Castro Freitas cleverly skipped past the bionic women and instead let his design hand be guided by “the semiotics of sexual desire” threaded in the spirit of Mugler. He was thinking about nightcrawlers and glamazons who operate in the shadows. He set out to channel “the fetishised cliché of the showgirl”; clothes that reek of untouchable glamour. Highlights included second-skin latex skirt suits, floor-length glossy trench coats pulled close to the body and catsuits that dripped in nude-coloured gemstones. There were opulent feather headdresses, sculptural overcoats that migrated into a curtain of fringe at the hem and stars formed a silver-frosted gallery across draped dresses with square-shoulders.
There were many Mugler-isms peppered throughout. From razor-sharp, femme fatale tailoring through to skirts and tops that sprouted with feathers, harking back to Mugler’s SS97 Birds of Paradise collection. Through Castro Freitas’ lens they felt right for the now. An excellent first chapter.
Photography courtesy of Mugler.
