Beauty Archivist: Mugler FW 97 and Why Couture Needs to be Separate from Reality
The Siberian supermodel Irina Pantaeva appears on the runway, her face powdered down to a luminous soft white. A rich yellow sweeps from the sides of her nose up and over her brow, moving across her lid via hot orangey reds into a clean bright fuchsia reaching high at her temples and draping into her cheek. Her natural brows are replaced by branching black lines that follow the same dramatic angle as her cheek bones. They have the feeling of something both severe and organic, the diagonal flick of a calligraphy pen directly from the bridge of her nose up to her forehead. Her eyelid is drawn in the same precise pitch black extending horizontally out to her hairline where it also branches into two points. A third line is created by a heavy straight lash extension. Irina’s lips are angular, her cupid's bow pointed. A lacquered black with a deep red interior. The look feels part 80s club kid part insect like creature.
Manfred Thierry Mugler really pioneered the couture show as theatre during the 80s and 90s. His elaborate shows owed nothing to an idea of wearability or commercial viability but instead were pure decadent fantasy, showing up to 300 looks and running for up to an hour long. By 1997 the house of Mugler was both reaching its peak creatively - Les Insectes is often considered one the best examples of Mugler at the height of his power - and sadly starting its decline. Mugler stepped back just a few years later in 2001 and the house of Mugler itself was shuttered in 2003. Of his departure the designer would say “Fashion was a very emotional and artistic vehicle in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, the look was extremely important. There were real stakes, but it’s not like that anymore.” Mugler felt his creativity was unable to survive the increasing commercial pressures of the industry. However the work of Manfred Thierry Mugler has hardly faded from the forefront of fashion culture in the years since and right up to his recent death in 2022.
Mugler’s 1997 Fall Couture show “Les Chimères” was conceptually a continuation of “Les Insectes” his Spring show of the same year where, inspired by Kafka and David Cronenburg, models were sent out in the process of fusing with insects, becoming variously glossy, waspish vamps with hard bug eyes and trailing antennae. By Fall 97 they had evolved further into hybrid phantasms that merged the human with mythological animals. All while retaining the powerful feminine sexuality that was part of the designers DNA.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Here the beauty reminds us of the otherworldly nature of the models, the first 8 looks feel grounded in a sort of Noir-ish hyper reality of sinuous tailoring and glossy latex trench coats, but the models faces are askew enough to hint at the theatrical nature of the world Mugler is laying out. Each makeup look is individual but few have natural eyebrows and all have dark pointed lips in deep red, purple and multidimensional black. The texture recalling the previous season’s beetle wings. Eyes are pulled out at odd angles with multiple forks and rich jewel toned shadow pulled up to the brow. It's a tell that this sculptural tailored world is about to devolve into the kind of runway theatre for which he is best known.
By the time we get to Irina’s first turn, look 16, the collection has started to reveal itself and the models that come out are starting to resemble weird creatures with a mixture of fur, feathers and scales. Several of the models have their eyebrows fully obscured by rounded smokey shadow, carving out deep eye sockets. This feels like a precursor to what Alex Peters at Dazed Beauty recently coined as “Succubus Chic” exemplified by the models Gabriette and Amelia Grey, but this version also calls back to 20th century Hollywood’s Femme Noir and the rich palette of Guy Bourdin.
One of my favourite looks from the collection is look 39. A white feathered and crystal encrusted dress and headpiece that looks like it belongs in a fantasy version of Russia’s frozen far east. The face inside this pure white Narnia dress is dramatically pale and matte with shades of deep red and charcoal diffused from the bridge of the nose all throughout the eye socket. the makeup hides the brow, the most human element of the face, and in doing so completely restructures it. The thick angular black liner, a constant throughout these looks, lifts off of the face and becomes a three dimensional wing, evoking some sort of insect, bird or more obscure inhuman thing. On the lower lash line a similar point extends towards the cheekbone and the lip is that other signature of this shows makeup the glossy, yet super precise, sharp black and red. This look is such a great example of how important show makeup is in building out the world of the collection. Such a darkly alien beauty look atop this icy confection of a dress adds so much. Imagining this look with a blow out and Victoria Secret style bronze glam feels like it strips away the layers of Mugler's inspiration and becomes something pageant-y.
The show gradually builds in intensity as it goes through its 57 looks until it reaches one of the most climatic finales of just about any show ever. Adriana Karembeu emerges, transformed into a winged and scaled siren like creature. She is wearing the Chimèré dress, supposedly the most expensive Couture dress ever made. Created in collaboration with legendary corsetier Mr Pearl and artist Jean-Jacques Urcun and taking two years to complete. A golden articulated corset that looks like the armoured belly of a snake, spilling out into a gown of hand painted scales and feathers. The breast plate drips with hot red crystals and horse hair grows from the sleeves. Adriana’s hair line is raised showing an alien expanse of white forehead from which white feathers continue into elaborate winged fins. She wears yellow cat eye contact lenses, the hollows below her eyes are bloody red and a multi-tonal peacock blue sweeps across her lids then vertically upwards to her crown. The effect of the makeup, alongside the gown, transforming her fully into a dark mermaid fantasy.
“Couture Fashion Week’s focus has shifted all the way back to commercial viability which does often mean sort of boring and tailored towards the vanishingly small number of patrons who can afford to purchase, instead of the full and unrestrained expression of the artist creating it.”
1997 was the year of the Brit Invasion of the couture schedule, with Alexander McQueen debuting under Givenchy and John Galliano with Dior. Two new iconoclasts, undoubtedly influenced by Mugler’s legacy, continued his concept of a runway show as a theatrical presentation, complete with a plot and characters. In recent years this idea of spectacle and narrative has sort of mostly disappeared, with houses like Dior now showing the kind of restrained stealth wealth that is actually bought and worn by Couture clients. It feels a bit weird to mourn the loss of a world so rarefied and inaccessible, but for me the extravagance of the 80s and 90s shows put them completely into the category of fantasy and therefore does make them feel valuable to the culture at large. La Chimère dress may have nothing to do with any idea of real life but nor does it have much to do with the Couture client either. It exists as a piece of art rather than a garment that is intended to be worn by anyone. Because of that it feels like it exists in the public domain much more than an extremely expensive and well cut cashmere coat. Couture Fashion Week’s focus has shifted all the way back to commercial viability which does often mean sort of boring and tailored towards the vanishingly small number of patrons who can afford to purchase, instead of the full and unrestrained expression of the artist creating it. A loss I am excited and hopeful to see regained in the future. For now, Manfred Thierry Mugler’s singular vision and 30 year career has provided us with a wealth of shows and beauty looks to obsess over whilst we wait for the return of the drama
Words: Grace Ellington
