French fashion designer helped define the ‘power dressing’ look of the 1980s

Manfred Thierry Mugler, who has died aged 73, was a French designer and perfume creator whose architecturally ingenious creations broke new ground in fashion and furnished women with a host of disguises, enabling them to dress as aliens, insects, robots and cars.

With his wasp-waisted, broad-shouldered, body-conscious creations, Mugler helped define the ‘‘power dressing’’ look of the 1980s, when his highly choreographed fashion shows were part rock concert, part Hollywood musical. Supermodels shared the runway with drag queens, singers and occasional porn stars, all dressed in his elaborate designs.

‘‘I never dreamed of being a fashion designer. I wanted to be a director,’’ he told

T, the New York Times style magazine, in 2019. ‘‘But fashion happened to be a good tool. It was a means of communicating.’’

A former ballet dancer who later turned to bodybuilding, Mugler was fascinated by rigid materials and often worked with latex, leather, rubber and plastic. Some critics called him misogynistic, saying his clothes turned women into hypersexualised cartoon characters. Others accused him of having a fascist aesthetic and an unseemly interest in hard-edge attire.

But designers including Alexander McQueen and Jeremy Scott cited him as an influence, and his work dominated European catwalks into the early 1990s, when Mugler began to turn his attention to perfume. His first fragrance, Angel, became a global blockbuster, with a sweet, candylike scent unlike any other perfume at the time.

Over the years, he dressed celebrities including David Bowie, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Diana Ross and Demi Moore, who wore one of his black floor-length dresses in the 1993 movie Indecent Proposal. His clients also included Ivana Trump, who would order ‘‘one suit in 12 colours’’, as he told it, and actress Julie Newmar, TV’s original Catwoman. ‘‘On a scale from one to 10,’’ she once said, ‘‘in Mugler I feel like an 11!’’

Mugler often turned to animals for inspiration, designing couture gloves that were covered with plastic ‘‘porcupine’’ needles and creating ‘‘mink’’ coats made from layers of chiffon or tulle embroidered with gold. (He refused to work with fur.) Many of his clothes also featured metallic effects; for his spring show in 1992, he designed a chrome motorcycle bustier complete with breastmounted rearview mirrors and handlebars that sprouted from the hips.

He said conforming to trends and expectations was among the worst sins a designer could commit. ‘‘The opposite of good taste,’’ he said, ‘‘is safe.’’

Manfred Thierry Mugler was born in

designer/perfumier b December 21, 1948 d January 23, 2022

Too Funky,