Welcome to Behind the Scenes, a series in which we track the designers as they put together some of the most anticipated shows of each season.
“We’ve done a 180 this season,” said Mugler’s Casey Cadwallader with a smile, three days out from the brand’s Spring/Summer 2025 fashion show, which took place in Paris concert hall Le Trianon Thursday afternoon. “Now, at this point for me at Mugler, I think I’ve shown the character, shown the personality, and now I kind of want to show the clothes.”
This season, the brand known for its dark, high-octane, performance-based shows surprised us all with a more traditional format in the middle of the afternoon. No special effects. No celebrity cameos on the runway. “Mugler is always here to do something different,” Cadwallader said. “This time, I decided I want daylight.”
It also made for a good view, as attendees could spot stars Cardi B, Anitta and Normani on the front row, wearing looks similar to those in the collection (Cardi even sported one of the angular, face-obscuring wigs models wore on the runway). This “clothes-first” runway show is an important shift for Mugler, helping spotlight key categories like denim and tailoring, showcase its new menswear offering (launched during pre-fall) and boost its accessories business. (A new bag, the Fang, debuted on the runway and is already available to buy.)
While they bring social media buzz, performance-based and celebrity-heavy shows – particularly those in semi-darkness — perhaps take some focus away from the collections, Cadwallader acknowledged. As Mugler aims to continue scaling, and as luxury labels across the board face a sales slump, it’s a smart moment to hone in on the clothes and accessories.
When I arrived at the Mugler studio on a rainy Paris afternoon, three days out from the show, casting was underway downstairs while Cadwallader took a break to talk to Vogue Business. The atmosphere was calm until five minutes in, when the fire alarm went off, and the whole building was evacuated, including Casey, myself and the brand’s managing director, Adrian Corsin. Then, Corsin and I got stuck in a service lift on the way back into the building. “Never a dull moment at Mugler,” he joked.
Back in the studio, show prep was ticking along, fire alarms notwithstanding. The looks were “generally locked”, so the team was focused on casting, plus checking embroideries that came in late and perfecting some of the constructions, Cadwallader said. “We styled a little early, so we know what we’re doing, and now we’re just racing to the end of the clock, as we always do, before showtime on Thursday.”
Balancing “snackable buzz” with long-term strategy
Cadwallader decided on the SS25 concept backstage at the AW24 show, a spectacle in semi-darkness where the likes of Paloma Elsesser, Irina Shayk and Eva Herzigová tore down various curtains throughout, revealing new stage areas in plumes of smoke. That followed the SS24 show, where industrial fans sent veils and trains airbourne down the length of the runway, with models including Paris Hilton and Angela Bassett (The SS24 show preparation was featured in Inside the Dream: Mugler, a new documentary on the house that was released on Thursday).
For Thursday’s show, Mugler gained access to the venue the night before, so rehearsals took place on Thursday afternoon, two hours before doors opened. Eric Von Christison showed individual models how to pose and turn in front of the camera as Cadwallader and Corsin looked on. Von Christison also worked with Mugler on the AW24 curtain show, with complex performances and special effects. Sometimes simple movements are harder to get right with no distractions, he explained, so the pressure isn’t totally off despite the stripped-back format this season.
“It’s different this season, with all the theatricality taken away,” the designer said. “It’s a full strip down to the elements. It felt really right to me. It also felt really nice, with it being the 50-year anniversary of the house, to have a sort of fresh start.”
Cadwallader took over Mugler in January 2018, staging his first show for SS19, with strong tailoring and denim straight out of the gate. Rapper Cardi B sat front row. During the pandemic, Mugler created a series of viral fashion films starring the likes of Hunter Schafer, Dominique Jackson and Lourdes Leon to launch see-now, buy-now collections of the brand’s then-signature bodysuits and sexy separates. Mugler returned to the runway for AW23 with a blockbuster show featuring musician Arca on the runway and of-the-moment stars Lisa Rinna and Tayce front row.
Current owner L’Oréal acquired Mugler from Clarins Group in October 2019. L’Oréal doesn’t break out revenues, but Corsin said Mugler grew in very high double digits for 2023, tripling revenues in Asia over the same period. Mugler’s DTC business is growing by triple digits this year, he added, “helping to compensate for the difficulties the fashion wholesale industry is experiencing”. Shows aside, the brand has staged some major marketing coups this year, most notably Zendaya wearing the archival autumn 1995 Mugler robot suit for the premiere of Dune: Part 2, which generated $152,000 in media impact value, per Launchmetrics.
A lot of houses have leaned into commerciality to account for the luxury slowdown, but even despite the more classic show format, Mugler’s collection was notably directional this time around, with sculptural suiting and gowns inspired by a flower’s anatomy, intricate corsetry and towering matching shoes for every look. “I think in the moments of difficulty, you always come out through the lens of creativity and through dream and through inspiration,” Corsin said. “You can go heavily into cost cutting and reduction, but I don’t think that’s the strategy in the long-term. In moments of difficulty, the dream and fantasy is more important than ever.”
Of course, the front-row attendees will still drive clicks. “I think that there’s a lot of ways to play it. This time, I wanted to have the buzzy people in the front row wearing the collection. In making the collection, there have been pieces along the way that have given birth to sisters [similar looks that didn’t make it into the show]. And some of the sisters will be worn by some of the VIPs in a way that is an extension of the runway instead of having VIPs walk this time,” Cadwallader said. “That’s a choice we made in trying to make it clothing first. But also just the reality of the fact that if you dress those people and they are in the room right next to the models, [the impact] can be the same.”
“It’s actually very Mugler to do what we’re going to do,” added Corsin. “It’s about balancing the short-term, ‘snackable’ buzz that you can get on social media with the longer-term strategy about building the codes of the house and showing key products that women and men are wearing. Moving in this direction [with the show] is to have both at the same time.”
Creating a full look
Cadwallader tried to make a more “concise” collection this time, designed as full head-to-toe looks from the beginning. During the rehearsal, he called a model over to show how the curved silhouette of her jacket (sharp at the neck, bulbous at the hips) is reflected in the shoe, both with a matching pearl detail. “There’s a more maniacal precision in this collection, which is very much a part of my spirit. I’m really leaning into it hard this time,” he said.
Atop the mood board are around 10 singular gardening gloves in various colours, inspired by Cadwallader’s new hobby, gardening, at his place outside of Paris. “I went on Amazon to find some and went crazy,” he said. “They are so cool!” He demonstrated one with solid black plastic fingertips for poking holes in the soil that feel “quite Mugler”. Their colour palette became a green and black trellis embroidered jacket in the collection.
Cadwallader is also perhaps nostalgic, with the 50th anniversary of Mugler impending. He took sections of the archive “more straight on” than he would have in the past (notably the curvy tailoring) this season. But he never replicates. “It’s important for me to take the archive, put it in a blender, and then make something different out of it.”
Denim is Mugler’s number one category, Corsin says, so it makes sense there was a pronounced denim section in the show this time around. “We have this big group of raw denim that’s much more of a casual look instead, but the way that I’ve resolved that is that the bag and the shoe all are made out of the exact same denim,” Cadwallader said. “It’s this sort of funny twist where you’re taking the formality of a suit but then applying it to totally different volumes of denim.”
To the public, Mugler is known for its viral videos post-show, with behind-the-scenes snippets, celebrity interviews and up-close runway shots. On the brand’s TikTok, videos from the AW24 show totalled 4 million views, with multiple videos totalling over a million views across publications like Vogue, Dazed and The Face. “We’re still doing that,” Cadwallader said. “There won’t be a drone this time, but there will be cameras everywhere. This show is a bit smaller in terms of the invitees, and we always wanna make sure that all people can see the show. So we edit it like crazy to give it out in little snippets so everyone can see it, and find intimacy with the way that we use the camera so that you really feel like you were there.”
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
More from this author:
5 womenswear trend predictions for Spring/Summer 2025
Behind the scenes: Avavav’s track race runway, featuring Adidas
