Mugler and Alia: Alive!

Paris and Antwerp – My Couture Week started in sync, so it’s only fitting that it ends with one. Although the houses of Thierry Mugler and Azzedine Alaia weren’t technically part of the couture program, their presentations were weekend. In his life, Thierry, before his reincarnation as Manfred, was very supportive of his friend Azedi, who was known to be the architect of his success. In death, their standard bearers are Casey Cadwalader at Mugler and Peter Mullier at Alaia. I have no idea if they’re connected, but this season shows that both designers are not only interested in their legacy, but the challenge of translating those legacies into something vibrant and relevant to the viewer, far removed in time and space from the O.G.

Cadwalader is the fifth person to adopt the Mugler brand. “I think it’s you, my son,” shouted the mountain, who had only met Manfred a few times before his death a year ago, but had gotten along well. There was nothing about the show Thursday night that suggested Manfred’s judgment was wrong. “We appreciate a lot of the same things,” Cadwallader said. “Movement, different gender expressions, extreme changes. Manfred took people and turned them into characters and my big difference was that I made them their own supersonics. Being a powerful person is different now. People dress to keep themselves warm rather than to turn heads. Being naked and showing off your curves is about being proud of yourself.

It was an orgy of both – nudity and curves, I mean – but Cadwalader spoke of “rolling two dynamics into one” with this collection: hard edge on one side, love on the other. Biker Leather, Black Lace Up. “I’ve always hated being tied up, but something you hate is something you should try because you’ll probably do it differently.” And he did. Lace became an integral part of exploring nudity and curves. More volume and coverage, a dress, but still sport in the ankle “Because I want clothes to hug the body in a certain way, I want women with breasts and women with hips and women with hips to wear the clothes and still wear them.” Adjust their shape and go with them.

Cadwallader broke the internet with his videos during his lockdown. On Thursday night, he chose La Villette for the first physical performance in three years. It’s a place familiar to those who once traveled to the outskirts of Paris for Gaultier, Galliano and McQueen. He said he would invite many children from the city. “I want people to scream and shout. No stone cold faces. I want a little drama. And Cadwalader pulls off a stunning masterpiece: an authentic, stripped-down show in the great Mugler tradition, but techno-updated for darker times. Models stormed one side of the stage, then rode a toy down the other, with cameras following them from all angles (the “bootcam” was an integral part of the set.) A large screen behind the stage relayed the results.

In the way Cadwallader intended, the audience became part of the show. Real Housewives Lisa Rinna was in the front row. Speaking of late, how the mood-cum-Mugler model

iwe Fumudoh broke the fourth wall and came looking for it of Best moment of the past week. Sasu, the brute, lashed out at the tallest pony in mock rage. You want that on the pop culture frontier. Or positionDominique Jackson as blonde Spider-Woman wrestles over a lace body and black corset. Or Arca doing Arca, Omahira doing Omahira, before Name Dwarf, Amber, Shalom and Eva Herzigova, Cadwalader acknowledging the power of legend like Thierry bringing Jerry Hall or Julie Newmar or Tippi Hedren to the stage. Yes, it was campy, but that’s the power of fashion nudity to make memories and hold them forever, holy. A dirty church type, in other words.

Mugler has earned the reins. So do I

edine Alaïa. His unparalleled elevation in female form created excitement among the acolytes—and a formidable challenge for anyone brave enough to step into his shoes. On Friday night, Peter Mulier cracked it with a simple but bold solution. He presented the new collection in his own apartment on the 21st floor of the Riverside Tower in his hometown of Antwerp. Azzedine was a legend in his own household, from food he cooked for a select few to an entirely fashionable approach, Mulier continued the tradition. But he admits that showing it in his own home opened up something for him. “Alaya is the most I’ve ever been to, and it will be easier for me to do it because it was here. That I could do more Azedin in my house than Azedin in the house.

It wasn’t too hard to analyze that paradox. Being a private person, Mulier felt it suited his personality to share his new venture with a small group of friends and industry professionals. He spoke of the importance of overall closeness to silence the noise of this confusing time in history. The invitation was a handwritten letter for each guest. The audience sat on the furniture, some even on the lower Mulier bed. And on the soundtrack of his friends David and Stephen Dewaele, AKA 2ManyDJs, Jeff Buckley set the tone with a sweet moan.

And all that freed Mulier to “do” Azzedine. The original looks—a knit draped into a sensuous shape, cut in the round, with no seams in the front or back—has shaped Alaïa’s curvaceous tailoring since the 1980s. At the same time, they are detailed with bugle beads like pins after the famous Jean Baptiste Mondino painting. A ruffled skater dress similarly echoed Alaia’s classics, as did bandage dresses in black leather and silver lace. Mulier grabbed his master’s fetishistic bottoms with leather straps, and a pair of mac and pants cut from patent leather mesh. And I call her the…mushroom, Mulier prefers black camel or dirty green, which will forever be Azedine to me.

The 21st floor of the Riverside Tower is framed in suitably brutalized concrete, so two “concrete” stone-patterned jacquard skirts felt like Muller’s acknowledgment of his own home. And sheer taffeta dresses with turtlenecks whispered the modern evening as right-hand man to Raf Simons at Dior. In other words, despite the success of his new collection, Mulier promises that it will be more than Alaia Media. A post-show dinner in the Rubens Room of Antwerp’s Royal Art Museum, finally breaking the chain of an 11-year renovation, underscored that promise. Walls hang not only with the old master Peter Paul Rubens, but also with idiosyncratic geniuses like James Ensor, reminiscent of the unique cultural heritage in which Muller was steeped. It looks like he’s already incredibly laid back with Alaya.