Three hundred looks. One hour. A 150-year-old circus in the 11th arrondissement. Thierry Mugler's Autumn/Winter 1995 haute couture show at the Cirque d'Hiver wasn't a runway presentation. It was a siege.

March 1995 was Mugler's twentieth anniversary, and he chose to mark it by staging the single most excessive fashion event of the century. French television broadcast it live during primetime. The set was a multi-levelled white stage with two runways and a spiral staircase, the Angel perfume star logo hovering above like a corporate halo. Male go-go dancers flanked the walkways. The soundtrack veered between house music and classical before James Brown walked out and started screaming.

The cast list reads like someone ransacked three decades of fashion and film. Naomi Campbell. Kate Moss. Claudia Schiffer. Eva Herzigova in a volcanic eruption of red ostrich feathers. Jerry Hall in a crystal-encrusted catsuit so sheer it functioned more as a dare than a garment. Linda Evangelista wore a powder-blue gown with a jewelled salamander headpiece. Elle Macpherson carried a dog. Tippi Hedren, thirty-two years after The Birds, walked in a black satin avian dress that referenced the role Hitchcock made her famous for. Julie Newmar, television's original Catwoman, appeared in black rubber lace. Patty Hearst performed a striptease.

Then came the robot.

Nadja Auermann emerged encased in an articulated silver bodysuit made from metal and Plexiglas, six months in construction, built by corsetier Mr. Pearl, artist Jean-Jacques Urcun, and aircraft specialist Jean-Pierre Delcros. It was Fritz Lang's Maschinenmensch remade as couture, the kind of garment that doesn't belong on a runway because it belongs in a museum or possibly an armoury. Helmut Newton photographed it. Zendaya wore it in 2024.

The Birth of Venus dress was quieter but stranger, a translucent bodysuit embroidered with paillettes and pearl beads, Botticelli translated through the logic of a Parisian atelier. Cardi B wore it to the 2019 Grammys, which tells you something about its shelf life.

Tim Blanks called it one of the greatest fashion shows ever staged. That feels about right. The show existed in opposition to everything the mid-nineties was supposed to be about. Calvin Klein was selling silence. Ralph Lauren was selling tasteful restraint. Mugler was selling chrome exoskeletons and live James Brown and Patty Hearst taking her clothes off in a circus. The minimalists won the decade, eventually. But nobody remembers their shows.

I keep thinking about what it meant to watch this on television. Not a highlight reel, not a documentary years later. Live, in your living room, between whatever else was on that night. Fashion as an event that happened to you whether you cared about fashion or not.

Eva Herzigova in red feathers at the Cirque d'Hiver

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