Mugler’s Corsin on Paris Fashion Week, China growth

To name one bold trend among the shows on schedule at Paris Fashion Week (PFW) Spring 2025 so far, it has to be sexual empowerment and breastplates — two of which are historical trademarks for luxury house Mugler. It’s truly the season to be Casey Cadwallader and Adrian Corsin, the brand’s creative director and managing director respectively. The house creative director’s summers spent gardening in Fontainebleau spurred the dream of his floral and fauna Spring 2025 Mugler collection, which was presented in Paris on Thursday September 26. From the spiked fingers on gardening gloves, to the newly-introduced bat-shaped bag “The Fang,” the offering embodied nature-inspired punk with studs, denim, dark fringes hiding models’ eyes, and elevated leather looks. It marks a continuation of the Mugler comeback to the Paris Fashion Week (PFW) schedule, having returned in the Spring 2024 season. A revival that is being handled by managing director Corsin, having joined the house in 2022, taking over the management of business development for the brand's fashion activities (fashion director of business acceleration). As Mugler celebrates its 50th anniversary, Corsin reflects on the legacy of founder Thierry Mugler, the brand’s return to Paris Fashion Week with the highly anticipated Spring 2024 collection. The managing director also speaks on the brand being a newbie to the China market — having recently opened its first concept store in Shanghai in the Reel Mall in Jing'an district where it merges fashion and fragrance as the house’s first ever concept store. A reliable move seeing as Mugler-owner L’Oréal Luxe Division has become the global market leader (in sales) in luxury beauty, with net cash flow at 6.1 billion euros in 2023, up by +23.9%. To commemorate the brand finally moving into the China market, Jing Daily sat down with managing director Corsin in Paris to discuss the Asia expansion, along with the brand’s new collection, and spearheading brand collaboration business strategy. Jing Daily: What does PFW do for Mugler in terms of business? Adrian Corsin: It's the opportunity where there's a lot of VIP. The celebrity that you can have at the show gives another level of visibility as well, which has helped and from a completely business perspective. Then also, when you are on the calendar you're just aligned with how stores buy and how retailers buy. It's actually a lot more work when you’re off the calendar. Stores or retailers get confused about what they are buying or delivering. It’s easier for them to come in and understand when the product is going to be in the store. That is the biggest business impact, I think, has been just like really solidifying our relationships with retailers and our partners, because it's easy and clear. JD: How is Mugler’s business performing in Asia currently? AC: I can't give precise numbers, but our business in Asia has doubled over the last year, and there has been a big push, definitely from China and Korea. Those are two of our most crucial destinations, where there's a real love for the brand. JD: What has contributed to the brand’s popularity in China? AC: We started organically in the market. From the get go, we identified two or three key people that he wanted to start working with on an organic basis, to start developing that relationship. So very early on, we were dressing people like Chris Lee, and that was very organic at the beginning without really a business strategy behind it. And we've seen how that, combined with everything that we're doing on the celebrity side, I would say more than American celebrities, has just organically created an appetite there. When I came in and we discussed with Casey that the opportunity was already there, I thought about converting that because we had done the groundwork, building the desire, building the dream, building the fantasy and the communities there. JD: Is Mugler seeing China bounceback into business? AC: We weren't really present in the market previously. So instead of saying to bounce back. It's a bounce in, I would say. It's a strong bounce in for us. Up until the last two years or so, the business was very focused on the western world. Even if we were laying the groundwork authentically. Everything that we've been doing, every new store, every new experience, all of that is just sort of incremental and additional. It's not like we had this huge business that then dropped. I think a lot of the players have, and then are struggling to get that back. We arrived over the last year and a half, and the business has been great. JD: What was the impact of the H&M collaboration in 2023? AC: There were two big things. The first one was understanding, for the first time, the menswear appetite for Mugler. We had heavily flirted with unisex and menswear, but we had never done any and H&M was the first time that Casey designed pieces for men. Almost half of the line at every flagship store was filled with men waiting outside. And so that kind of was the key indicator that gave us the confidence to know the moment to launch menswear. So I'd say that was the first thing that that was really influential for and then I think in terms of style, I think Casey arrived in January 2018 and the first five years were really reestablishing Casey's voice, his language, and a clear point of view. At the beginning, it was heavily influenced by this this sporty territory and, the spiral territory, and all these very things. H&M, in many ways, was this incredible celebration of that first chapter of Casey. The H&M collaboration was really the bookend of that incredible first chapter of really putting Mugler back on the map. Now, our focus is on the ready-to-wear side, and exploring that in a way that feels more elevated and exploring more couture codes, and whole looks of that as well. JD: How would you describe the current collaboration strategy? AC: Firstly, authenticity is really important in everything that we do. I think it is said often, but there's a bit of collaboration fatigue in the industry. Every week there's a new drop or a new collaboration, and it's about finding a synergy that feels authentic and is like, one plus one equals three. When you are combining two things and the end result is better than if you just put a logo on another thing. I think first and foremost, we always come from an approach of, does this feel right, and is this an authentic collaboration? And then on the business side, what we try to reflect on is exploring collaborations that will allow us to explore new and complementary categories that we don't currently explore. JD: Have you explored new categories following collabs in the same way as H&M? AC: Yes, we did the Jimmy Choo collaboration and then we launched footwear. It is ultimately the testing ground to do that. We effectively just launched, this year, the collaboration of eyewear, and it was sold out almost immediately. And now in this show, you'll be seeing our own. JD: Do you do market research in the lead up to collections? AC: We love to test. It always starts organically, and then we see and learn what worked. For a house like ours, we don't do market research, but that's the way we do it, by testing and learning and really responding to our customer, being close to them. I think sometimes market research is you don't really get the key insights. But, when you launch a collab, you get real feedback from the real customers. That's more precious than anything. Consumers can also sometimes be difficult to articulate what they want. But if you put something out there that's daring and progressive, and you have a great response to that, then you know that that's actually the direction you should go in or not. But sometimes, if you ask a customer ‘What do you want?’ Sometimes they can't always tell you.

Mugler’s Corsin on Paris Fashion Week, China growth

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Published September 28, 2024

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Mugler’s Corsin on Paris Fashion Week, China growth