Boss Mode

As Casey Cadwallader takes the reins at Mugler, displays of strength and sensuality—and a sense of play— are on the agenda.

- Lynn Yaeger

WHEN CASEY CADWALLADER WAS old enough to be left alone for an evening, his parents would often return home to find their young son dancing furiously to MTV videos, including George Michael’s “Too Funky,” which was costumed and directed by Thierry Mugler. Little could they have imagined that nearly three decades later their boy would be living in Paris—and at the helm of the house of Mugler.

Today, this formerly too-funky schoolchild is ensconced in the Ninth Arrondissement in a classic Haussmann apartment alive with light and plants, happily at home with his husband, the artist John Miserendino. Cadwallader may have grown up in bucolic New England, but he was dreaming early of the hard glamour of the night. “I was interested in what people do that was secret and salacious, radiant and pulsing with energy and sex—dripping with sex!” he says, laughing.