Mugler

Thierry Mugler is a French designer, photographer and founder of the eponymous cosmetics and fashion brand. He was born in Strasbourg on December 21, 1948. His family was originally from Austria and had moved to France in the turmoil of the post-war years. After training as a ballet dancer, Mugler studied costume design and designed his own clothes on the side. At the age of twenty, he moved to Paris and worked as a freelance designer for several major brands in Paris, Milan and London. His designs were so well received that in 1978 he opened his first boutique at Place de Victoires in the 1st arrondissement. The 80s and early 90s were extremely successful for Mugler. His spectacular fashion shows, staged as happenings, featured the supermodels of the day, Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell. In 1990, at the height of his fame, Mugler was one of the few designers who did not have his own fragrance line. This changed when he founded Thierry Mugler Parfums S.A.. Two years later, he began his collaboration with the cosmetics company Clarins. In the following years, Mugler developed several fragrances for women and men, among which Angel is probably the most famous. The fragrance was launched on the market in 1992. Olivier Cresp is credited as the "nose" behind Angel. The fragrance is a composition of patchouli and fruity notes with distinct hints of honey, caramel and chocolate, rounded out by coumarin, a plant substance with a spicy, vanilla-like scent. "Angel" was among the top three best-selling perfumes in France in 2011, along with Chanel No. 5 and "J'adore." In 2007, it was the winner of the FiFi Award in the Fragrance Hall of Fame category. This award, given by the Fragrance Foundation, is considered the most important award in the perfume industry. In 2010, the fragrance won another award from the Canadian Fragrance Awards. The bottle, designed by Jean-Jacques Urcun in the shape of an irregular five-pointed star, presented a challenge for the glassblowers. Eventually, the job was taken on by Brosse, a glassblowing company specializing in high-end bottles. Among the faces signed up for the advertising campaign for Angel were top models such as Jerry Hall, Naomi Watts and Eva Mendes. Due to its great success, an entire Angel series was created in the following years. These include Angel Innocent (1998), developed by the "nose" Laurent Bruyère, which does not use patchouli, Angel Le Lys (2005), which is the brainchild of Christine Nagel, and Angel La Rose (2006) by Olivier Cresp, to name a few. The house of Molinard released Nirmala, a fragrance overtly based on Angel. Mugler filed a plagiarism lawsuit against the house, which he won in 1999. Angel was the inspiration for several famous fragrances, such as Coco Mademoiselle (2001) by Chanel, Miss Dior Chérie (2005) by Dior, and Nina (2006) by Nina Ricci. A*Men, Alien or Innocent are other fragrances from the Mugler brand. At the end of the 90s began the decline of the brand Mugler, because its extravagant fashion did not correspond to the purist zeitgeist of the years. As a result, he withdrew from the fashion business and went on to create stage costumes for Cirque du Soleil or Beyoncé Knowles. At the beginning of the 2000s, Mugler moved his residence to New York, underwent various plastic surgeries and hard bodybuilding, and changed his name to "Manfred." Since 1997, the French cosmetics company Clarins Fragrance Group owns all rights to the Thierry Mugler brand. Due to high losses, the fashion division was dissolved in 2002, while the perfume business continued. Until 2013, Thierry Mugler remained artistic director of his perfume line at Clarins.