DAVID Koma has put his all into his latest collection for Mugler this season, delivering glam graphic aesthetics and seriously sexy silhouettes. Truth be told it was probably the most “all” he has put into a single collection for the house thus far, but nonetheless it saw the body-con behemoth of a designer realise the modern Mugler woman with a little more soul.
Soul being the one thing, as any Thierry Mugler fan knows, she just has to have.
For AW16 she just had to have leather constructed creatively for hot climates. Correct, this was a collection for A/W with a spin, in its compass that is, and one that found it pointing south. As models raked along a sandpaper runway in acid yellow and black cheetah print like big cats on the savannah Koma made it clear that she is a woman who will stand against the elements, displaying expanses of skin cut out acutely by mock-croc, zip-embellished trims and other frilly fancies that decorated hips.
Any harshness was mitigated by a couple of silky, slip-like dresses, which like the majority of the collection, had a sporty vitality to them without having to wave a uniform, or at the very least a sweatband, in your face like other fashion houses feel compelled to do upon when trying to reference sports-luxe. If that’s even a thing any more.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that Koma decided the Mugler woman should up sticks and head south for the winter. The Mugler woman has always been an elusive figment of exoticism. Quite marvellously Koma seems to have captured this with AW16, but without overdoing it and in turn scaring off the modern woman more occupied with the postmodern trend for understated ubiquity.
One can’t escape the feeling however that Koma wants this season’s Mugler woman to rival that more forcibly in future. Could therein lie the makings of an even more engaging brand entirely? We hope so.
by Liam Feltham
Images courtesy of Mugler