Thierry Mugler chose the catwalk as the venue for his 20th anniversary party at the Cirque d’Hiver. That it was OTT was given: Mugler was a showman who went on to design costumes for the movies and, yes, the circus. The “scalpel-cut and aerodynamic details” that Vogue once credited him with were evident in the collection’s tailoring, but the show was memorable more for its performance by James Brown; its cameos by the likes of Tippi Hedren, Patty Hearst, and Veruschka; and its rather liberal use of fetishistic latex. And we haven’t even gotten to the silvery cyborg getup, later famously photographed by Helmut Newton, that was revealed when a model shed her floor-length coat. A frightening and tantalizing image for the dawn of the Internet age, and a fitting end for this list of the nineties’ most unforgettable fashion shows.
