Remembering Thierry Mugler: Haute Couture 1995

Thierry Mugler launched his first collection in 1973 and spent the following two decades building one of the most singular visions in fashion — women as mythological creatures, as armoured goddesses, as something not quite human and considerably more interesting. By the time he staged his 20th anniversary show at the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris in 1995, he had already rewritten what a couture show could be. Then he rewrote it again.

The Fall/Winter 1995 haute couture show ran for an hour. Pat Cleveland descended from the ceiling dressed as the Madonna. Jerry Hall walked. Carmen Dell'Orefice walked. Veruschka walked. The casting was a deliberate act of memory and provocation simultaneously — here are the women who built this, still here, still doing it better than most.

The collection itself was latex, chrome, leather and crystal. Fetish dressed as couture, or couture dressed as fetish — the distinction was the point. Mugler presented an ultra-sharp vision of the future that borrowed from science fiction, from bondage, from armour, and managed to make all of it feel inevitable rather than provocative. The jewellery was part of that logic: chunky chokers in metallics and leather embellished with oversized crystals, pearl nipple tassels worn over latex, cascading cabochons, jewel-encrusted bibs. Oversized pearls thrown casually over lace. Nothing understated, nothing apologetic, nothing that didn't know exactly what it was doing.

Mugler died in January 2022. This show is the reason the archive keeps getting rediscovered.

Images courtesy of the Vogue Condé Nast Archive

Thierry Mugler Haute Couture 1995 Runway Show

Images courtesy of Vogue / Conde Nast archive