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

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Strasbourg, eastern France. His father was a doctor, and his mother a homemaker whom Mugler described as ‘‘the most elegant woman in town’’.

Mugler had a difficult, lonely childhood. He studied interior design at art school and found refuge in the theatre, joining a Strasbourg ballet company at age 14. ‘‘The theatre was made for me,’’ he told Vogue. ‘‘But after the beauty of the light, the red curtain and applause – everyone had someone to wait for them backstage, but me? Never. I had years and years when I was alone.’’

By age 20, he had moved to Paris, where he auditioned for contemporary dance companies but found better luck in fashion. He had started making his own clothes and soon began freelancing for houses in Paris, London and Milan. He launched his first line, Cafe´ de Paris, in 1973. The next year, he created the house of Thierry Mugler with a business partner, Alain Caradeuc.

Mugler oversaw his own advertising campaigns and photo shoots, and directed short films and the music video for George

Michael’s 1992 dance hit Too Funky, which featured models such as Tyra Banks and Linda Evangelista in his creations. He also worked as a costume designer, creating metalstudded outfits for a 1985 Come´die-franc¸aise production of Macbeth.

For his label’s 20th anniversary, he organised a star-studded fashion show in Paris.

‘‘I didn’t feel it at the time, but soon after the show, I realised it was the end of the era,’’ he told magazine. ‘‘Afterward, fashion became a branding, marketing thing. The model agencies started controlling the world, and it all became cheesy to me.’’

He sold his brand to cosmetics giant Clarins in 1997, and left the company five years later. He focused on bodybuilding, developing a muscle-bound frame while also designing costumes for cabaret shows. He also began using his given name, Manfred, after years of being known mainly as Thierry.

He returned to the spotlight in 2019, when he dressed rapper Cardi B in several of his vintage pieces, and outfitted Kim Kardashian with a crystal-studded latex dress for the Met Gala. –

T