Mugler for the Masses: Details of the Brand’s H&M Collaboration
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Mugler is coming to the masses, via a highly anticipated collaboration with H&M.
The parties revealed details — including that the collaboration will include apparel, menswear, accessories and jewelry — at a press conference Wednesday morning in New York. There, Casey Cadwallader, creative director of Mugler, and Ann-Sofie Johansson, creative adviser at H&M, sat down with Jose Criales-Unzueta to discuss the upcoming collaboration, which will be available online and in 120 stores globally on May 11. Prices range from $49.99 to $749.
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The tie-up is the latest in H&M’s series of high-low team-ups. Over the years, H&M has ignited high-low collaborations such as its blockbuster 2004 collection with Karl Lagerfeld, as well as those with Stella McCartney, Moschino, Maison Margiela, Balmain, Isabel Marant, Comme des Garçons, Lanvin, Versace, Simone Rocha and Giambattista Valli.
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Most of them sold out briskly. Its more recent collaborations have been more low-key, such as the 2022 one with Iris Apfel.
A big party and fashion show celebrating the Mugler-H&M collaboration will take place in New York Wednesday night.
“New York is New York. It’s really great to be here. We haven’t done anything in New York for quite some time. The timing was right to do something here. And it’s so convenient to be in New York, if you need something, it’s open 24 hours a day,” Johansson said.
Cadwallader added that he was up very late last night working on the event, “and it’s going to be amazing.”
Mugler was on H&M’s wish list, Johansson said.
Johansson said the company has a big in-house design team, and when they asked what is the most interesting brand right now, “Everybody kept saying Mugler,” she said. They were interested in not only what Thierry Mugler did, but also what Cadwallader has been doing.
The Mugler brand, which was founded by the late Thierry Mugler in 1974, was a major fashion presence in the ’80s and early ’90s. The brand has been making news in recent years due to fierce collections and runway spectacles by Cadwallader, who has been creative director of the house since 2017.
Mugler died Jan. 23, 2022, and his impact has also been fanned by the hit “Thierry Mugler: Couturissime” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum through May 7, after starting out in Montreal in 2019 and touching down in Paris in 2021.
Best known for its sexy brand of power dressing, Mugler sells its barely there catsuits, strong-shouldered tailoring and anatomically designed jeans on its website and to select retail partners such as Net-a-Porter, Ssense, Mytheresa and Nordstrom.
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Johansson said the Mugler H&M collection encompasses the history of Mugler, up through what Cadwallader is doing today. “We haven’t done anything like that before,” she said. She said they became involved in the project while Mugler was still alive, and after he died, they were determined to continue to make it happen. She said it’s also nice to educate people about “this iconic brand from the 1970s,” and how this brand has moved forward. Mugler is about to be 50 years old.
Reaching a wide range of people was important to Cadwallader.
“I’ve always believed that a collection should be available to people. I don’t believe that fashion should be for the exclusive few. That’s the way that I’ve always designed,” Cadwallader said. He said even with the Mugler collection, he tries to do many tiers of pricing.
“I’m very happy to make something that’s very luxury and very expensive, but at the same time, a lot of young people are very energized by Mugler and want a piece of it,” he said. To work on denim and Lycra that is more accessible works quite well, he noted.
“When the project to collaborate with H&M came about, I viewed it as a huge opportunity to get more people what they want,” he said. He said Mugler is about making people feel great about themselves, and making them feel empowered and confident. “I get a lot of messages on my Instagram — ‘I want Mugler but I can’t get it,’ ‘I’m a nurse and I really want to feel fab too.’ Come to H&M. I want people to enjoy it and I want everyone to have it; I have a very democratic opinion about that,” he said.
The collection is filled with such pieces including a black leather trenchcoat, black sequin tops, black sequin sweatshirts, slinky pants, body-hugging dresses, denim, sweatshirts, tote bags and jewelry.
Johannson said Mugler himself started to do small drawings and sketches and he was “super keen” on doing the collaboration. The collaboration was originally meant to be between Manfred Thierry Mugler, the house of Mugler and H&M. After Mugler died, H&M continued the conversation with Cadwallader and what he had done with the brand, such as denim, the spiral silhouette and his impeccable tailoring, as well as choosing a few archive pieces.
A music video was also instrumental to the collaboration.
“Pop culture is a big part of Mugler. There’s the making and the sculpture of the clothes and how it works with the curves of the body, and then there’s the culture of Mugler. When I started at Mugler, it was so important to get it back on pop stars and get it back on the stage. The performative aspect was always so much of what Mr. Mugler did,” Cadwallader said.
A video for the collaboration features Stardust’s 1998 song, “Music Sounds Better With You.” Cadwallader said the team tried to find a song with a recognizable hook and with a lot of energy that embodied the meaning of the collection.
In building the collection, Cadwallader said he really wanted to do tailoring, because it’s the most iconic thing in the house. “Black sculpted shoulder, nipped-in waist…then there’s a section that’s more about the denim. I know my sales figures and I know what everyone wants. I really wanted people to be able to get the hits,” he said, citing the denim and Lycra. He also wanted a section about the “cute hot dress that everyone wants. It comes in black and in a really bright color.”
There’s a hardcore leather, clubby section “very inspired by Mr. Mugler,” he said, pointing to the leather pants he was wearing.
He also wanted to push things like crystals “to bring a bit of sparkle to it,” and did things with H&M that he really can’t do at Mugler. The collection also features scarves, swimwear, hosiery and tote bags. They are also offering a whole collection of menswear.
He said he really enjoyed looking at things he had designed and trying to figure out how to keep the drama, but make it more accessible. For example, maybe a piece would have only one zipper to close, versus many.
Johannson said her favorite pieces are the menswear pieces, the leather pieces and the denims, both the skinny ones and the baggy ones. She also loves the earrings, she said. “I would wear a lot of these things,” she said.
For Cadwallader, he said he’s most proud of the long leather trenchcoat with a giant scarf and the chain body jewelry to wear under a jacket or over a T-shirt. “It’s a really dramatic snake chain cage. The price is crazy, and everyone can have one,” he said.
Cadwallader said he spends a lot of time looking at the archives, which helped determine which archival pieces to bring into the collaboration. He said he loved the pink suit, which was very demure and represents the playfulness Mugler loved.
“So much of what I do is based on the lingerie and sheer, opaque sexy part of what Mr. Mugler did. It’s one that I reference constantly.” He said he tried to bring those key pieces back and offer them to everyone, such as the velvet dress. “It’s an iconic dress, and it’s so hard to find right now. It’s so Mugler, and so exclusive, and to bring it to everyone, is so cool,” he said.
“I was just really impressed with the quality and the attention to detail. The team at H&M did such an impressive job.…It was really well done. It’s so well made and fits so well. In the end, it makes it a huge success,” Cadwallader said.
Editor’s Note: This story was updated April 20 with looks from the Mugler H&M collection.
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