From the Chiasmus Archive: "Mugler Fall 2021 – Paris Fashion Week." November 29th, 2021

Casey Cadwallader’s video experimentation for his Fall 2021 collection continues on with Mugler’s Fall 2021 concupiscence exposé, although, in similarity to his Spring 2021 presentation, revealing a more refined dominatrix aspect to the sexualized styles. These digitalized, film clip orientated lookbooks certainly have polished the Cadwallader Eros train into a finer array for the Mugler brand, as noted with my Spring 2021 review, Cadwallader’s contemporary Daniel Lee, who, has just bowed out from the helm of Bottega Veneta.  Reflect the epitome of young ambitious U.K. and American designers who have rapidly risen the ranks of luxury fashion design, more so Cadwallader, in an attempt at appealing to exclusive markets. Lee’s futurist and blunt array’s probably didn’t cut the mustard, whilst overstating selective markets, with an, at times, odd sentiment of thumbing his nose at a broader market expectations, which seemed more attune with an arrogant disposition rather than innovation.

However, the caveat of landing a job as a creative director for conglomerate controlled fashion house holds a brutal reality, that if sales are not reached and budgets stretched, your tenure maybe short lived. Fashion designers can churn through being at the helm of a luxury brand after only a few seasons, making that already prescribed stress even more immense in maintaining a renewed interest of the brand name. In turn to keep the presentations unique and innovation constant would be that challenge, particularly now in a post and possible 5th Wave Covid world, businesses across the board have not completely returned to normal.

Cadwallader’s redefining the Mugler brand name, whilst maintaining the stripped back and revealing styles when he first started with the seminal avantgarde luxury brand in 2019, debuted a feminine inspired unisex collection for Mugler’s 2019 Cruise arrays and it is these licentious arrays which have remained a deciding fixture for the brand. The Fall 2021 collection is of no exception, very much leaving off from Cadwallader’s Spring ensemble, the asymmetrical and recut shapes, offering an even more epicurean desire. In which, as mentioned, the dominatrix reins supreme with his latest offering in respect of the feminine Eros in all of its edacious desire, while Cadwallader pushes even more into the realms of the hedonistic, that was the late 1970s and early 1980s of Studio 54 sybaritism.

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(A.Glass 2021)