“I imagine it like a parade of individuals and selves,” creative director Miguel Castro Freitas explained backstage before he sent out chapter two of his Trilogy of Glorified Clichés. Titled The Commander, this collectsion looked to Mugler’s most towering legacy—power dressing—freshly reconsidered in light of, variously, 17th-century court coats, the glamour of the New Look, the Working Girl era, Russian Constructivism, Bauhaus, and Art Deco. “It’s a nod to individuality and a nod to plurality,” Freitas continued. “I think that’s where the power lies.”
On the runway, the looks hewed to elemental geometry—triangle, square, trapeze—before being teased to extremes, sometimes feminized, and often made “authoritarian and boxy and blocky and primal,” as the designer put it. His intention to achieve something both armored and effortless was well illustrated by a pale gray column dress in wool jersey–light and fluid yet anchored by an important jeweled plastron that seemed to float on the fabric (clever inside rigging keeps it from dragging the fabric down, he explained). Like many of his peers this season, Freitas seemed to relish playing with colored fur and leather, a glee that produced a strapless dress in pink and black shearling trailing an orange tail or a multi-pocketed cargo jacket in metallic pink leather.
Throughout, Freitas leaned into construction intended to be worn with conviction or, as he put it, “with the pride of a peacock.” Whether Mugler’s base will flock to stirrup pants held in place by towering stilettos remains to be seen. They just might find satisfaction in flaunting waists with a rigid gold belt, say on a long-sleeve midi-dress in pleated bronzy green lamé. Harder to picture in the street was a boxy number such as the leather top tooled to look like automobile upholstery. A coat in glossy leather with a shearling lining and a leather overcoat with jutting shoulders were recognizably Mugler. Those will likely connect.
