On January 19th, 2011, Nicola Formichetti debuted his first collection for the house of Mugler. This clip is the finale of that presentation, which was dark and brooding menswear taken straight from the streets and the clubs.

In addition to Mugler’s designer debut, there was an added interest to the sound that would accompany his runway presentation. He is labeled Lady Gaga’s fashion director, and since collaborating with the musical artist early in her career (before high fashion designers clamored to dress her) they have become fast friends. He told me that her yet-to-be-released record was one of the points of inspiration for the collection. At this show, we got a sneak peak of what might be on that album: Gaga was the musical director of the project, and the song that reverberated through the Paris garage where the show took place was most definitely a dance track. But to listen more carefully provides the definite sounds of a song that was associated to Mugler in the past, one recorded by the original Thierry Mugler’s muse Lady Miss Kier, in which she too chanted the designer’s name. This is Gaga’s new rendition of a cult fashion song for Formichetti’s revolution of a cult fashion house, which is seemingly appropriate.

Read more to see exclusive images of the Mugler collection, shot by Formichetti himself, with an exclusive story on the collection.

Nicola Formichetti spends a lot of time on airplanes. With contributions to American, European, and Japanese fashion magazines, not to mention his post as Lady Gaga’s fashion director, his frequent flyer miles would make even the most seasoned flight attendant blush. And now as a designer of a storied French fashion house, he’s only getting busier. We managed to track Formichetti down way up in Vancouver, where he was photographing Rico, a man who is covered in eerily postmortem tattoos, including his face darkened like a skull, that Formichetti discovered on Facebook and decided to shoot for the first-ever images from his Mugler men’s collection. Facebook, tattoos, technology, collaboration: as Formichetti will tell you, these are the themes that will appear in the stylist-turned-designer’s collections.

“I feel more like a curator than a designer,” Formichetti explains, acknowledging that he is the sort of designer who looks to the streets for inspiration and asks his friends, like Rico here, for input. “It’s all about different characters and collaborations.” He started with the concept of extreme minimalism and moved toward the Digital Age, fueled the entire time by the new album of his loyal friend and most famous collaborator, Lady Gaga. “I want to say something that has the past and the future, but what is really important to me is the present.”

Formichetti has done his homework, learning as much as he can about Mugler himself (both designers have no formal training or ever studied fashion) and going through the entire Mugler archives in Paris, piece by piece. He says he was shocked when negotiations regarding his takeover of the creative direction of the house began, but ultimately it seemed logical. “I have always been a fan of what he did, how he always pushed to do something fresh and was ahead of his time.” Not that he wasn’t intimated: “At first I thought I couldn’t do anything better than he did, so I didn’t want to do it. And then I said, “Fuck it, I’m going to do my thing.”

Formichetti’s one significant change is that the brand and the collections will lose the original’s first name, being identified only as Mugler by Nicola Formichetti. The first collection, he says, revolves around darkness, Berlin, rebirth and death, among other influences—“You know, all those happy things Gaga and I like so much.”

Photography Nicola Formichetti

KEYWORDS: nicola formichetti, Thierry mugler