30 AUG 2019: Yes, calling all women and men (and everyone else!) who love a bit of glamour.  Make your way to Montreal before 8 September this year.  Dress in your best or your most outlandish (and bring sketch pad and camera if you’re a designer) for a museum fashion show like no other.  It’s the Thierry Mugler Couturissime Exhibition, enjoying its premiere here in Canada before it moves on to Rotterdam and other venues later in the year.

My husband and I were in Montreal for a few days and set off to their superb Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) with, perhaps, some sombre Dutch landscapes in our thoughts.  But on arrival we bumped into some old friends who enquired if we were there to see the Thierry Mugler Couture Exhibition.  “Oh don’t miss it,” they urged, so that is where we headed.  And what a show it is.

If Thierry Mugler’s name is unfamiliar to you, you won’t be in Montreal long before you see the publicity for this exhibition circling the city on its buses or soaring over the museum entrance on fashionable Sherbrooke Street.  French-born Mugler, now 70, is no stranger to Montreal himself.  He lived there for several months in 2003 while working on the fabulous costumes for Zumanity, a Cirque du Soleil show (for adults only) in Las Vegas.  And although reports suggest that he didn’t think he was ready for a retrospective show of his own, the MMFA eventually persuaded him to agree; a coup for Montreal.

The dimly-lit, atmospheric entrance gallery gives some information on Mugler, and describes his early interest in theatre costume, exhibiting some of the over-the-top costumes he designed for the Comédie Francaise’s 1985 production of Macbeth in Avignon, France.  Here, closer than any theatre-goer could get, museum visitors can study costumed models of witches, kings and queens, henchmen and guards and other characters in Shakespeare’s dark tragedy.  The workmanship is superb, the imagination unlimited.  Contrast Lady Macbeth’s massive, heavy grey gown, collar and crown with the leather-studded codpieces complete with leather ties worn by the guards.

The next gallery is a jaw-dropper: an array of mannequins adorned in the most outlandish clothes imaginable along with multi-media installations, films and information on how Mugler has dressed – and influenced – a wide range of celebrities.  Here’s a bright green man’s suit worn by David Bowie beside a slinky sequinned dress also worn by David Bowie.  Here are clothes owned by Lady Gaga, George Michael, Beyonce, Sharon Stone, Diana Ross and our own Celine Dion.    And what clothes they are.  Spangles, sequins and sparkles are everywhere.  Dresses are heavy with semi-precious jewels or crystals. There are outrageous skirts resembling bird-cages and embellished evening gowns with great angel wings.   There’s metal here, even plexiglas.

In following galleries, more screens feature runway shows that not only demonstrate Mugler’s fantastical creations but also reveal his use of African, Asian and transgender models that would have been remarkable back in the eighties  And at one of these shows there’s a hilarious glimpse of how a team of husky dogs pulling a model on a sled decided to go their own way and became tangled with the audience as well as members of the press and some expensive-looking cameras!

The show includes 150 pieces of theatre costumes, celebrities’ clothes and more conservative  finely-tailored suits and dresses worn by such people as Danielle Mitterand, once France’s First Lady.  Another highlight is a show of several stunning photographs by Helmut Newton, the subjects all being supermodels wearing Mugler creations posing in beautiful natural settings or with backdrops of monumental architecture in different cities of the world.  Also on show are a selection of photographs taken by Mugler himself … a keen and accomplished photographer.

Continuing the theme of fashion, the museum is also presenting a gallery on Montreal Couture, showing the work of ten contemporary fashion designers.  And there’s a section displaying craftspeople and their creative work in a variety of mediums, from leather to lace.  The gift shop offers a lavish exhibition catalogue and Mugler himself has written a book entitled Fashion, Fetish, Fantasy.  Both would make superb gifts for the fashion lovers in everyone’s life!