Thierry Mugler

Thierry Mugler, the French designer born in Strasbourg on December 21, 1948, built his name on the corseted, wasp-waisted silhouette, and his corsetry is why he belongs in a lingerie encyclopedia. Between his first collection in 1973 and his retirement in 2002 he dressed women in padded shoulders, plunging necklines and cinched waists, and his late-career corset pieces made underwear construction into stage costume. He died in Vincennes on January 23, 2022, aged 73.

Ballet at 14

Mugler began classical dance at 9 and joined the corps de ballet of the Opera du Rhin at 14. In the mid-1960s he designed for two London boutiques, Mr. Freedom and Mother Wouldn't Like It. His first collection under his own name, Cafe de Paris, came in 1973, and in 1978 he opened his first Paris boutique on the Place des Victoires.

Boned bodices and car chrome

His 1980s collections borrowed from the 1950s, with boned and corseted bodices and, late in the decade, garments and accessories modeled on the tailfins and chrome trim of American cars. French accounts of his work describe silhouettes pushed to extremes with padding, deep necklines and wasp waists, the same proportions a corset bra or waist cincher produces. In 1989, at the Love Ball in New York, he met the corsetier Mr Pearl, who moved to Paris and worked with him on his collections.

The motorcycle corset in "Too Funky"

In 1992 Mugler co-directed George Michael's video "Too Funky" and designed its costumes. The best-known piece was a "motorcycle corset," worn on a mock runway by one of a cast of supermodels that included Eva Herzigova, Linda Evangelista, Tyra Banks and Nadja Auermann. The same year he launched the fragrance Angel.

The 1995 Cirque d'Hiver show

His fall 1995 haute couture collection was staged at the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris, a show that the press called the Woodstock of fashion and that marked the peak of his theatrical runway style.

Clarins, retirement and the return of the archive

Clarins took a majority stake of 83.5 percent in the house in 1997. Mugler retired from fashion in 2002, and the ready-to-wear business closed the following year. He came back for specific commissions: costumes for Beyonce's I Am... World Tour in 2009, a role as creative adviser from 2013, and a one-off design for Kim Kardashian at the 2019 Met Gala. Also in 2019 the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts opened "Thierry Mugler: Couturissime," with more than 140 garments made between 1973 and 2001. His Angel and Alien fragrances were reported to bring in about $280 million a year.

Last updated October 7, 2026