The pandemic hasn’t impacted Mugler’s standing with celebrities. If anything, the dearth of red carpets has led to more risk-taking when they actually happen, and that’s precisely what creative director Casey Cadwallader has been specializing in lately. Miley Cyrus called upon him for two of her more scandalicious looks this year. If you saw her in them, they’re probably seared into your brain; the first was a strapless see-through dress embroidered all over with tiny mirrors; the second, a body stocking more sheer than opaque that has 1.8 million likes on Instagram.
Cadwallader also pointed out the increasing importance of music videos, those very 20th century cultural artifacts, in the absence of live performances. He’s working on clothes for those apparently, too. In fact, about half of his time is spent on VIP requests. The other 50% he expends on the label’s ready-to-wear, but he’s not exactly playing it safe with this category either. “I felt it was time to deal with the fantasy side of Mugler,” he said, referring to the house founder’s infamous collections of the 1990s.
There’s the hyper-sexy clothes, and then there’s the way he’s going about making them. Cadwallader is putting a lot of effort into sourcing more sustainable materials. He says those bodystockings will be constructed with 100% recycled lycra by Fall 2021. And he’s also working at lowering the prices of pieces like the twisting seam jeans he designed for his first Mugler collection two years ago and the lycra and illusion tulle leggings and tops that he likens to “complex puzzles” of couture pattern-making. “There’s energy in young people that want to buy Mugler,” he said. That jibes with the trend toward body-conscious—and body-positive—collections we saw this season from emerging designers across Europe.
Mugler is moving to a see-now-buy-now model starting in February. This capsule collection is a “prelude” of that outing, and—speaking of videos—Cadwallader and his team filmed one to promote it. The three-minute clip stars a Bella Hadid avatar and a cast of “all genders, all races, all sizes” friends of the brand. In that way, it quite effectively speaks to both sides of the designer’s reimagining of this brand.