Paris Fashion Week: Mugler S/S 2012

Paris Fashion Week: Mugler S/S 2012 What to expect of a show that opens with a video of Lady Gaga wearing some terrible 1950s-British dentistry buck teeth and pigtails, and being jolly rude? As that film begins

, a forest of camera phone-holding hands shoots up to film the film.

"I'm Mugler woman," intones the show's famous meat-dress-wearing musical director, then adds "Don't f*** with me."
 

OK, thinks you're starting-to-sweat correspondent (it's hot in the Gymnasium Japy), I shan't. "She will hate you, Mugler woman." That seems a bit strong. "Welcome to Paris Fashion Week." Thanks! "I am Mugler woman. Don't f*** with Mugler." Sheesh - give it a rest.
 

The appointment of Nicola Formichetti as creative director of Thierry Mugler was extremely canny, brand-identity-wise. For the utterly charming Italian-Japanese stylist - and co-mastermind of Lady Gaga's wardrobe - has an online footprint Burberry would sell its last trench coat for. Millions of awkward, bedroom-dwelling teenagers with 24-hour broadband see Gaga as their totem, and hence this on-its-uppers house suddenly finds itself a key player on fashion's digital frontier.

However without wishing to f*** with Mugler, Formichetti now faces a problem: should his shows be performance art 2.0, simply a way of generating eye-catching content for those screen-lit millions watching across the world? Or should he try and reconcile the demands of the Gaga constituency with those who might actually buy the clothes and make Mugler some money?
 

"This was for a softer woman," said Formichetti after the show last night. And certainly there were signs that he is starting to consider what's wearable as well as what's watchable. He even used beige, a colour so conventional that here it felt radical. Of course there was lots of more outré fare: flesh-baring panels hacked out of oddly-extended neoprene coats, trousers that looked half undone at the bag, escalator-unsuitable trailing strips of materials hanging from hems.

 This is what they call "deconstructed". But that beige - especially in relatively simple (albeit wetsuit-tight) pairs of trousers was the most telling detail. It suggested that Mugler is looking for customers as well as online rubberneckers. Whether he can keep both groups interested, however, is the challenge.
After the lights came up and the music turned down, the atmosphere in Gymnasium Japy was really rather muted. Formichetti rushed off to edit a film of the show for those waiting on Twitter, Tumblr and all his various other outlets - for this is a man with more platforms than St Pancras Station. It must be exhausting.