The Rise and Fall of Mugler

mugler once dominated the Fashion World however after some very risky and questionable business moves the fashion side of the company was shattered completely but now mugler with its new h m collab is once again the brand on everyone's lips so how did such a colossal brand fall so hard and why has it taken so long for them to make a successful return after a few years of freelance work in 1973 Manfred launched his own label with this collection named Cafe De Paris the company at this time was also called Cafe De Paris and was founded in partnership with businessman Duke unfortunately images of the collection from 1973 are not available online but these images are from later down the road when the looks were recreated The Collection featured dresses made of muslin trimmed with Fox and was sold in kerterra industrial a very influential store in Paris The Collection was a hit but the name of the company was a little unorthodox the Fashion World especially in the luxury Market was used to naming companies after their founder it adds authenticity to a label and generally feels more luxurious in the mouth than a dehumanized name like Cafe De Paris so by the following year still financed by Alain Kara Duke the name of the company was cemented as Thierry mugler the name that Manfred was going by at the time you should know that this isn't without debate many people think that his company was begun in 1974 as the company was only then named Thierry mcglare whereas some believe it was began in 1973 and considered the two Cafe De Paris collections as his first and second however according to the Munich press release that came along with the ongoing Thierry Mugabe Couture collection they are in fact the same company and were still funded by Allen garaduk as the company name changed to Thierry mugler then according to the mugler kuchaka's exhibition in America that my friend Hanan of I deserve Couture visited the company was then further funded with help from isana on businessman Pierre Berger by Didier grembach who then later that year added Michelle dualde as the business manager thanks to Hannah and for this information of course I will be linking his YouTube Instagram and Tick Tock all in the description box below so along with this name change and structural Evolution which I believe saw a link turned into a minor stakeholder they began producing ready to wear for select boutiques of which the earliest I could find was this Autumn winter 76 collection however as you can see from this as well as the other show I could find images from around this time his aesthetic was very different to how we think of mugler today these clothes were more relaxed and more comfortable than how you may think of mugler but make no mistake this was successful so successful in fact that he was able to open his first Boutique in Paris on 10 place to Victoria in 1978 that stalked his women's ready to wear as well as a new addition in menswear that was first shown in the spring summer 78 collection that really translated the image of the Thierry mugler comfortable late 70s aesthetic two men very successfully throughout this period we are already starting to see his theme in the adaption of silhouette mostly at this point achieved by adding volume but it was in Autumn winter at 1978 that a new theme would start to enter the mix one that would really come to define the brand as a whole the theme of course was futurism in Autumn winter 78 mugler began to add in shinier Fabrics metallics Lamay masks and even cat and jumpsuits to give us the beginning of a mugler vision of the future throughout the seasons this scene became increasingly developed as the sales and famous began to rise exponentially mugler had become a really huge name in fashion and everyone wanted to see his spectacular shows which of course they couldn't without a ticket this is well before the internet and shows were significantly more inaccessible at least that was until Autumn winter 84 when thieremuga would stage their first show open to the public the show was meant to celebrate their 10 years open as a fashion house and show off the opulence and futuristic aesthetic that the company had become synonymous with the world was well into the 80s and fashion was just as affected by the popularized opulence of the decade with muclair being easily the most dramatic as mentioned he was already well known by the fashion world at this point but this show which had 6 000 attendees and 350 dresses was an absolute highlight to his career and saw the brand awareness Skyrocket mugler had hit after hit with their brand with a huge highlight being the spring summer 92 ready to wear collection featuring the motorcycle bustier that still retains major popularity today mugler was one of the most talked about brands in the world and they had the retail side to capitalize on that by 1986 they had over 50 stores worldwide they were dressing Stars left right and center from David Bowie Joey Arias Klaus Nomi his career highlight work for George Michael's two funky music video all the way to Productions like the musical Emily Jolie and the most expensive comedy francaise production since its founding with his designs for this Shakespeare play the I'm too superstitious to say the name of by the time the 90s rolled around mugler was undeniably a force in the industry and ready for the next chapter this will come in their announcement that mugler would begin showing Couture from their first Couture show Autumn winter 92 mugler was new fresh and newly exciting but until very recently Couture as a whole didn't have a lot of Buzz everyone was looking towards ready to wear and even Carl Lagerfeld was advised not to take his role with Chanel in 1985 because Chanel and Couture were both dying as we discussed in both my videos the life and death of Carl Lagerfeld and Chanel Has Fallen and yet despite it being unlikely to be truly profitable it was phenomenal marketing nothing promotes a fashion house quite like Couture and mugler was regularly one of the most discussed automata 95 at spring summer 97 and auto winter 97 Couture are all regularly stated as the Brand's biggest hits and it's easy to see why they all exploded a theatrical drama that was so well suited to the world of Couture while allowing the construction to take a mouth watering Center Stage not only did these shows have the visual impact to allow them to still be some of Fashion's top moments ever even 25 years later but they also had the construction to back it up by 1997 mugler was accepted as an official member of the Champions no longer just an invited member as he had been since 1992 when mugler would arrive at the financial means to make Couture happen was founded in 1990 with a contract with Clarence that saw them swap a third of each other's businesses so Clarins owned 33 of mugler fashion and Manfred owned 33 of cherry mutler perform two years later in 1992 the first mugler perfume was launched in the same year that the House Began showing Couture and it was launched to colossal success the perfume named Angel was a direct reference to their first open to the public show Autumn winter 84. with the plan being that as the Couture collections fed the popularity of the name mugler the perfume would be there reliably through the years for consumers to buy into just a little piece of it this concept is represented on this the BCG Matrix and is more famously known for this part Cash Cow it's simply a product or service that makes the majority of the money for the company and funds the question marks and stars at the top of the grid which in this case would be ready to wear and Couture sales of the cash cows are usually based on the Brand's perceived value from the question marks and stars so this is a symbiotic relationship that they have yeah in fashion it works slightly differently as the brand Equity isn't as linear as it is in most other sectors and these stars and question marks can be much more costly than in other areas of retail but that wasn't the only expansion to the company that came funded by the perfume sales in 1993 mugler opened their own state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Australia in France in order to produce their ready-to-wear to an even higher level allowing them another competitive advantage over their competitors in the luxury retail space this is called vertical integration where a company acquires more parts of the supply chain and is rarely done with fashion houses unless they're trying to improve the product quality past what is available from the market currently it is a huge risk it's a very costly thing to implement in fashion but a very admirable one that was probably very calculated they already owned other manufacturing companies that fed the mugler house but were technically different businesses so by vertically integrating to bring production in-house they were expanding the company in a way they knew would be beneficial to the company they were creating a phenomenal business structure behind the vision of an extremely talented designer but they weren't quite prepared for what would come next in 1997 Clarins acquired a majority stake in Thierry muclair they were already a minority stakeholder because of the perfumes beginning in 1990 but because of the losses at the Thierry mugler house some of the other minority shareholders wanted out Clarins knowing how well the perfumes were doing and seeing growth for mugler in the future brought out all the minority shareholders including Grande the initial investors leaving only one other stakeholder the designer Clarence claimed that the business structure wouldn't change with the change of ownership but of course it did and the harmonious balance of the BCG Matrix was quickly Disturbed designs became increasingly commercial to meet clarence's desire for larger profits which though isn't always a negative for mugler it really impacted the visual language of his work watering down his aesthetic and impacting the design Integrity of the brand as is painfully obvious from this the Autumn went to 2000 collection because of this over the years between 1998 and 2001 only in a three-year time span Clarins ran Thierry mugler creatively into the ground he showed his final collection in Autumn winter 2001 and Manfred had left the company by 2002. by 2003 Clarence had shattered the Couture line stating the reason as huge losses from the fashion side they're ready to wear two was closed with the last fashion show being menswear Autumn winter 2002. mughley had tried to follow minimalism trends that were going on at the time with Brands like Helmut Lang seeing incredible profit however for mugler it just didn't work with the ethos of the brand and so they lost out big but the mugler name still had enormous value mugler was still a name associated with the truest luxury in clothing and they easily could have continued mugler's fashion Side by upping the catwalk show budget to allow for something theatrical and then use that to create a launch of fashion-based cash cows like an IT bag sunglasses or honestly makeup to have that commerciality that they hadn't yet fully fleshed out if I were advising I would have made a makeup line at this stage Clarence is well known for Cosmetics so it's within their wheelhouse and with the way makeup trends were going into the theatrical it could have been an easy transition for mugler but instead they continued to only produce fragrances without a particularly good marketing plan I have to try to be clear here because the mugler fragrances were iconic but considering how successful we know fragrances like alien which was released in 2005 were it's a real Testament to just how respected the name mugler still was the general public knew the name mugler and that carried value the advertising for the fragrance was great and very on brand too but the problem was there was no plan for longevity with this those sales were good Clarence had no designer to bring the look of mugler forward and continue it in the minds of consumers and instead it seemed like they were banking more on manfred's personal Fame from his private projects like his work for Cirque du Soleil Humanity or the costumes for Beyonce's I am tour which they weren't part of the brand obviously affected the perfume sales especially the sweet dreams corset was such a huge boost for the company's visibility but other than these boosts the label kind of plateaued at this time producing perfumes and nothing much else though the perfumes were nearly all very successful it's really a Marvel that they stayed so profitable without a design side something that the company was very much aware of though eventually they seemed to realize how unsustainable this was and tried to make amends by bringing back ready to wear with a new head designer Rosemary Rodriguez her first show was men's spring summer 2008 second was a capsule collection of women's and the third was Couture 2008 Autumn winter so the whole Trinity of fashion offerings were back but not necessarily to a warm reception unfortunately she was bringing back the Clarins era mugler where the looks were a little more watered down than the theatrical aesthetic that consumers luckily still remembered of nuclear so it just didn't go down too well Clarence took a risk by coming back so strongly to Fashion all self-funded Clarence is still family owned so this would have been an enormous Financial undertaking and it seems that this safe aesthetic just wasn't pushed as far as it needed to be effectively they were repeating the behavior that had seen the company arrive at lackluster sales in the first place so this time they were prepared to bring back the BCG matrix model with the launch of muclair Cosmetics to fund the fashion line it's a smart business plan as it was the last time but without the fashion bringing decent credibility to the label it simply couldn't last because the relationship needs to be symbiotic by 2011 Rosemary Rodriguez was replaced by Nicola former Kitty for machete was at the helm for six collections total nine if you include Resort and pre-fall collections but unfortunately he also wasn't really able to encapsulate that known mugler opulence and though he did have some great looks and really brought the drama that was really needed for mugler including this incredible Autumn winter 11 show that Gaga famously walked in and sales were up with the Nicola former Ketty offering he didn't last there for long and he didn't make the Splash in the industry that they really wanted and I honestly don't really know why they had a great aesthetic for mugler the shows were theatrical and they had heavy celebrity endorsement from Gaga but it just didn't stick which I think is a real shame from here Manfred rejoined the fashion side of the label in 2013 as creative advisor but the brand actually stopped showing at Fashion Week entirely yet again only to return a full year and a half later for spring summer 15 with new head designer David coma David Como also didn't last very long with his last collection being spring summer 18 marking three designers in a row that couldn't get muclair going again but that's not to say that it was the fault of the designers usually when a company is having musical chairs at their head design a role it signals to the fashion world that the leadership don't understand the brand well enough nor do they have a good enough grasp on the new and interesting in fashion to know who will be a good fit for the company however they did make one really important and in my opinion great change to the company back in 2015 with the David Comer return they changed the name of the fashion side to mugler a name that in my opinion fits the original branding really well it's just a shame that the clothes didn't match that energy what they really needed was someone with theatricality built in foundationally to be able to revive that Spirit of mugler and they would try yet again with Casey cadweller who they hired from acness studios in December 2017 with Casey's debut Autumn winter 18 in this lookbook format The Collection saw mid-success online which in my opinion was because though it wasn't very on brand it had some really lovely sculptural pieces so bugler finally had some Buzz coming back to the company and from this quote it seems that's exactly what they wanted to either find an investor or a buyer in October 2019 they struck a deal with L'Oreal to buy mugler in its entirety fashion Cosmetics perfumes everything the deal completed in 2020 and immediately it was clear that L'Oreal had a very different vision for the companies the first show under L'Oreal's ownership was spring 2021 and the budget clearly increased exponentially the film because this was released during the pandemic up to the theatrics of the brand so greatly from what we were being shown before just to compare it to my favorite cadweller show pre-loreal these clothes weren't necessarily different they still had the sheer elements the pointy shapes lasers and structural garments but now the clothes were being reframed into this more theatrical manner in a way that was so perfect for mugler actually I mentioned that Nicola former Kitty also brought great drama to the brand even in a similar way and that it just didn't stick but Casey was beginning to it wasn't a massive explosion of success but it was certainly a start and L'Oreal were prepared to push over the next few seasons they showed online collections each to hyper theatrical futuristic visuals that fit so extremely well with the original mugler brand harkening back to the iconic Autumn winter 95 Couture robot which itself was an evolution on the Autumn winter 78 metallic people but it wasn't until fall 2022 three days after manfred's untimely death that the brand would really explode in the public consciousness The Collection their first catwalk back since the pandemic was shown in Paris Couture week and it was a sensation easily the biggest show the company had had in years but what's important to note here is that the clothes aren't much different they're just in a heightened context this was a spend money to make money moment and it worked the mugler label hadn't been this talked about in years and people were finally excited for the brand and their new Cash Cow offering in this bag legler was finally coming back into prevalence once more and we were all excited to see the next season at least that was until the announcement of their h m collab the design is great can't deny that lots of great callbacks to mcglare's past designs as well as new signatures that the brand now wants to be known for like the mesh pieces yes the pieces are phenomenal I would absolutely love to get my hands on a piece if only to see the quality considering that was something so at the heart of the nuclear brand back when they owned their Factory but more than anything else what excites me about this collaboration is the timing I haven't seen anyone else talk about how strategic it seems to have the company budget increase in Spring 2021 have their biggest show today in 2022 and then announce a h m collab for the following collection spring 2023 the sequential nature of this suggested me that this had been planned for a while and that the full 2022 show was specifically High budget to then create Buzz for the h m collab it's exactly the cash cow structure that we know mugler did so successfully before they had the Couture question mark or Star to push the brand awareness and Buzz out to the public Zeitgeist and the h m collab to reap the benefits it's so simple but it works so well when done and funded correctly I very much hope that L'Oreal allows cadweller to push the mugler design even further so that the theatricality that they have in the Robotics and the movements in the shows is also seen in some of the clothes even if it is just for some kind of grand finale piece that stamps the collection at the end thank you so much for watching subscribe and hit the notification video to see more videos just like this one check out my beauty channel for videos like this one but about Beauty Brands and if you'd like early access to my videos my patreon is linked below foreign

Channel: understitch,

Views: 167,763

Keywords: fashion marketing, fashion branding, fashion retailing, retail marketing, mugler, thierry mugler, mugler h&m, mugler history

Id: yIASrkdFesE

Length: 23min 46sec (1426 seconds)

Published: Sun May 07 2023