There are very few designers who’ve made an impact as big as Manfred Thierry Mugler did through the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. His shows were pure drama, theatrics, performance, beauty; a tour de force where models turned into actresses, villains, insects, mythical creatures—into anything they wanted, really. The sense of empowerment was through the roof. After an incredible run of over three decades though, he left fashion in 2003 to engage in other creative activities. However, the House he had built was standing on strong pillars: perfumes. Now, in a new documentary titled Inside the Dream: Mugler by director Matthieu Menu, the audience will have access to the process behind the Mugler’s latest campaigns, runway shows, perfumes, and watch some exclusive archival footage.
It’s been fifty years since Thierry founded his brand, Mugler, which gave the world some of the most show-stopping, jaw-dropping looks in recent history. So first of all, happy birthday! In these rapidly changing times, it isn’t easy to keep a brand afloat. Although it struggled for almost a decade, creative director Casey Cadwallader’s appointment in 2018 changed everything. He’s tapped into the newer generations by tapping talents like Hunter Schafer, Billie Eilish, or Zendaya, scoring a collaboration with H&M that sold-out in just a few hours, or creating some truly viral moments in his runway presentations.
In Inside the Dream: Mugler, filmmaker Matthieu Menu continues on his Inside the Dream series, where he explores the behind-the-scenes of perfume-making and some of the luxury Houses that most benefit from them—he did a first documentary to approach the topic, and later did a second one focused on Dior. Now, he’s turning the lens to Mugler, which famously sells Angel, one of the most sold perfumes in the world (if not ‘the most’). But besides that, we’ll also get to see Zendaya trying on the chrome robot Maschinenmench from the Fall/Winter 1995 collection for her Dune: Part Two press tour, behind-the-scenes footage of Hunter Schafer starring in the Angel Fantasm campaign, and some unseen archive footage with the late founder Manfred Thierry Mugler.
The documentary will premiere on September 25th on Canal+ in France, and after that, will be released worldwide in streaming platforms yet to be announced. So stay tuned!