PARIS (AP) – The fashion industry has come into the music chairs this Paris season, with Thursday’s spotlight McGra debut.
Miguel Castro Freitas – Portuguese, Dior, and a lesser known name with precise hands – chose to take over and whisper a house built on shocks and silhouettes. He hit the volume.
In recent seasons, Magler was a red carbonated magnet – BeyonceCardi B, Megan The You Stallion and Dua Lipa regulars, Zendaya’s viral “Maschinenmensch” armor moment concludes.
The venue will set the tone. The sensual concrete underworld – warehouse/parking garage bones – is softened by velvet-like carpet seats. It felt illegal yet luxurious. This is the stage worthy of a label that has made club-friendly futurism the company’s proposal.
McGraw defined the 1980s
Thierry Mugler’s DNA is not a small inheritance. An uncompromising embrace of Bravado, Amazonian Screlders, Theater, and Rubber and PVC in the 1980s. Freitas didn’t tweet around it – he accelerated it. The shoulders were exaggerated to the width of the sculpture. A huge coco fake fur swallowed the frame. Lacquer Slick’s black PVC hugged her body like armor. The naked chest telegraphed the Mugler body-positive provocation. One look was literally hanging from the model’s nipple ring. This is the shock of responding to the camera as if listening to the room.
When former designer Casey Cadwallader Muggler defined temptation as engineering (corset waist, architectural waist, shiny surfaces), Fritus’ debut kept charging but strengthened the cut. You could feel the tailor at the helm: the seams sat neatly, the volume plotted rather than stacking, and the show’s shock tactics helped with clear silhouette strategies. There was nothing nostalgic. It was read as a contemporary route through familiar landmarks.
Strategically, Canny was the choice. In its debut season, this big brand is at risk either pastiches or retreats. Freitas managed neither. He resumed his playbook and ran the classic mugler movements with insider discipline, including shoulder/waist control, latex scenes, dramatic feathers, and theatres.
This is not a victory, it is not a solid, consistent opening statement.
It was less of a manifesto than a proof of concept. If the cut is relentless and the image lands on a single frame, the extremes of the Muggler are still talking.
“Mugglers have rethinked the power and limitations of fashion,” Freitas said.
On Thursday he signaled that he would continue to test those restrictions by polishing it, not by softening the house.
Verdict: A careful tailor making a bold debut. He didn’t rewrite the Muggler. He set it to full volume – and people left the talk.
