Paris haute couture week kicks off with tributes to Mugler

The opening of Paris haute couture fashion week, trailed as a celebratory return to live catwalk shows, was overshadowed yesterday by the death of the fashion legend Manfred Thierry Mugler .

Jess Cartner-Morley

The unexpected announcement of Mugler’s death at the age of 73 made a dramatic start to fashion’s most theatrical week. Haute couture produces showstopping, headlinegrabbing gowns for the upcoming red carpet season and for the world’s most extravagant parties.

The pedestrian business of hemlines, which other fashion weeks concern themselves with, has no place here. Couture week had been hailed as a cheerful post-pandemic celebration of live fashion, with twice as many physical catwalk shows scheduled as last season, but the news of Mugler’s death, which came just days after a Louis Vuitton show paid tribute to the late Virgil Abloh , moved the mood music dial to bittersweet.

Daniel Roseberry , the American creative director who over the past two years has plucked the Schiaparelli name out of fashion’s history books and put it back on to Vogue covers, paid homage to Mugler at his show.

A recent visit to Thierry Mugler: Couturissime , a retrospective of the designer being staged in Paris, “made me realise how much I had absorbed directly from his work”, Roseberry said.

“[Mugler’s] legacy in fashion today is so vibrant, in the way he created characters on the runway. This is very sad news. To be able to show today, in a space that is almost like a church, is an incredible honour.”