Mugler Spring Summer 2027: Miguel Castro Freitas Turns Nature Feral in Naturalia X
Mugler presented its Spring Summer 2027 collection, Naturalia X, at Paris Fashion Week. Creative director Miguel Castro Freitas used it to close the three-part runway cycle he calls A Trilogy of Glorified Clichés. The theme this time is nature, treated less as a pastoral backdrop than as something feral, sculptural and slightly unsettling.
A trilogy reaches its final chapter
Freitas was appointed creative director of Mugler in March 2025, succeeding Casey Cadwallader. His first outing for the house, Stardust Aphrodite for Spring/Summer 2026, was read by critics as a calmer, more grown-up take on the house’s hyper-feminine vocabulary. Naturalia X goes in the opposite direction, moving into the primal, where the body starts to look as though it is mutating.
Backstage coverage describes a world between the natural and the beautifully unnatural. Familiar Mugler signatures, such as the impossible waist and the exaggerated shoulder, give way to exotic creatures, animalistic textures and fantastical embellishment.
Feathers, flowers and synthetic hair
Freitas built the silhouettes from the tailoring he has made his own, including basques and micro-pleats, then pushed them into zoological territory. Reports from the show describe feathers printed with cheetah spots and wrapped in organza, synthetic hair cascading like a dress, and sequins inspired by the underwater world. Necklines echoed insect anatomy, and voluminous flowers were formed from plastic bottles.
Burgundy and black latex, snake print and fur reinforced the house’s long association with the body as architecture. Several looks exposed the back with unusual candour.
The founder in the room
The most discussed moment sat in the front row. British artist Alexis Stone attended as Manfred Thierry Mugler, using prosthetics and make-up to recreate the founder, who died on 23 January 2022 at the age of 73. Stone sat beside Krzysztof Leon Dziemaszkiewicz, Mugler’s longtime partner. French reports state that the clothes came from the designer’s own wardrobe and that the project had Dziemaszkiewicz’s approval.
For some observers the gesture was a tribute, and for others it sat uneasily. Either way, it made explicit the question hanging over every Mugler show since the founder’s death, which is how a house guards its memory while still moving forward.
Björk and the Les Insectes connection
The collection had a second life on the day of the show. Björk wore a custom Mugler look for a DJ performance in Poland, pairing a purple butterfly-print second-skin top with a black leather corseted skirt. Her headpiece was a fringed feather creation from Thierry Mugler’s Les Insectes Spring 1997 Haute Couture collection. The pairing joined two chapters of the house nearly three decades apart. Castro Freitas has described Björk as a longtime inspiration.
What Naturalia X says about Mugler now
Critical responses suggest the collection’s real subject is not nature but the archive. One reviewer argued that Freitas will ultimately be judged on whether he can treat Mugler’s heritage as living biological material rather than sacred relic. Naturalia X makes a credible case that he can, particularly where the surface drama is anchored by rigorous construction.
For a house that has built its reputation on spectacle, that is the more interesting proposition. Naturalia X does not ask whether Mugler still exists, because the Paris audience answered that. It asks whether the house can keep changing, and the answer on the runway was a confident, if deliberately extravagant, yes.
by Olga Barrale
Cover Photo by Elizaveta Porodina
