Thierry Mugler: Shock and Awe

• Mugler, whom the French called "createur du shoc". Picture: Getty

Some like to embrace it, others to fetishise it. Some want to expose it while others strive to conceal it. French fashion designer Thierry Mugler wanted to celebrate it. After the floaty silhouettes and the low-maintenance style of the early 1970s, he put women in bustiers fashioned from plastic, crystal corsets, PVC dresses and metal bras.

Now retired after a fashion career that spanned three decades, Mugler remains one of the most influential fashion designers of the late 20th century, and his spectacular work is celebrated in a new book, Thierry Mugler: Galaxy Glamour.

Born in 1948, Mugler, one suspects, always harboured fantasies of running away with the circus. Whereas designers such as Yves Saint Laurent and Coco Chanel celebrated all that was chic about French design, Mugler's work screamed sex, ostentation, wealth and power, with a sprinkling of super-freak thrown in. Shoulders were wide, waists waspish and legs endlessly long. Indeed, his aesthetic came to define the 1980s.

Originally trained as a ballet dancer (which gave him his love for "perfect" bodies), Mugler received no formal tailoring tutoring, but moved to Paris in the late 1960s and took to the field like an heiress to haute couture, designing for friends on the side while he paid the bills working as a window dresser. By the mid-1970s he had set up his own label and by the 1980s he was a sensation.

"I studied the structure of the body as one might study for Holy Orders," he said of his obsession with every curve and sinew of the female form. Indeed, he credited his dance education with teaching him about both the body and the way it should be carried. He spoke of his dream of "total theatre" inspired by his background in performance, and long before Alexander McQueen turned his shows into mini performances, Mugler made the catwalk into theatre. Indeed, while the French nicknamed McQueen the "enfant terrible", their name for Mugler was "createur de shoc" (creator of shock).

"Wearability" was not a word in Mugler's lexicon. Clothes were as restrictive as they were provocative. His inspirations included the insect world, film noir and robots; prints were banned in favour of bold block colour. He worked with solid, unyielding materials: plastic, metal, latex. Even his suits were aggressively tailored to give them a harder edge.

Famous pieces include a corset inspired by a motorcycle, complete with wing mirrors, and a gold suit of armour, recently worn by Beyonc in her video for Diva. He struck a wonderful balance between observation and voyeurism, saying: "I love the beautiful, the unusual and above all I love to watch."

He may also have said that "the greatest tribute I can offer to women is to sculpt the shapes of their bodies", but his work verged on objectification. The Mugler woman needed to wear a corset or waist cincher beneath her clothes. She needed to wear high heels and full make-up. She was pulled in, thrust out and trussed up.

Mugler presented himself in a similar manner. He dressed like a futuristic dandy, and thought nothing of donning his own dresses to show the models how to wear them, even taking to the runway to demonstrate precisely how he wanted them to walk and pose. It was not unusual for him to spend as much as 1 million on one of his spectacular shows.

He was obsessed with tall buildings, and frequently shot his campaigns on the roofs of skyscrapers, an obsession reflected in the strict architectural lines of his clothes, as well as their extreme nature. Fascinated by "extreme" locations, he shot Jerry Hall in the freezing desert, and favoured the Arctic as a location.

There was always a sense of costume in his design. His models were futuristic fashion superheroes, wearing clothes that seemed to harbour superpowers themselves. Throughout his fashion career he designed for numerous stage productions, including Macbeth and Emilie Jolie, a musical for children. He even directed the video for George Michael's 1992 single Too Funky and has said of designing for the stage: "I wanted to create costumes like states of mind, which could be gradually stripped away to reveal different layers."

Today Mugler works in photography and film, having retired from the world of high fashion in 2001, but he still strays into design. In recent years he has created costumes for both Cirque du Soleil and Beyonc's I Am… tour, on which he served not only as the star's costume designer but also as director, choreographer, set designer and lighting engineer, proving that he is most at home working with the stage.

But then he's always had a habit of getting involved in every aspect of fashion. He would interfere with photographers' work to the extent that the great Helmut Newton once snapped at him during a shot: "Why don't you do it yourself?" Mugler took the camera from Newton and did exactly that.

While the Thierry Mugler label still exists, Mugler himself does not design for it. He is still involved in the brand's perfumes, including Angel, a hugely popular scent that has been known to outsell Chanel No 5 in France. As timeless as his clothes were, artistically speaking, they were simultaneously of their time, especially as they helped to define the aesthetic of an opulent era when fashion shoots could take place anywhere on the globe and models didn't get out of bed for less than $10,000.

Mugler's ethos still inspires today's designers, especially his assertion and insistence that when it comes to clothing, beauty should trump convenience or comfort every time.

"Fashion is not enough", he once said. "I am trying to convey sensations and feelings… I am always telling stories… I invent my characters and put them on stage. For me, clothes are a language."

Thierry Mugler: Galaxy Glamour is out now, published by Thames & Hudson, 29.99

HIS LIFE AND TIMES

1948: the "Creator of Shock" is born in Strasbourg on 21 December.

1962: as a fresh-faced teenager he joins the Ballet Du Rhin, engaging a passion for movement and theatrical effects which was later translated into his collections. He keeps himself busy studying at the Ecole des Arts Dcoratifs in Strasbourg developing his knowledge of design.

1968: leaves the ballet and dances into his first job, as an assistant designer for Gudule boutique in Paris.

1973: presents his first collection under the name "Caf de Paris". He is already well known for his charisma and shocking style and references "the Parisian woman in the black dress" as his inspiration. The collection is described as "very urban", but Mugler's signature "shock factor" starts to peek through in his unique take on the classic suit and trench coat.

1974: Mugler founds his own label.

1984: the tenth anniversary of his fashion house proves to be a marvellous spectacle. For his autumn-winter collection, he opens the doors to mere mortals, allowing – for the first time in France – the public to be part of fashion week. More than 6,000 people attend.

1992: launches his first fragrance for women, named Angel. He describes the fragrance as "an aura around you, like an angel whispering into your ears". Later that year, he shows his first haute couture collection at the Hotel Ritz.

1994: After six months of preparation and an expenditure of a whopping 18 million francs, a show to mark the 20th anniversary of his house was broadcast live and described by the New York Times as "full of every insane moment in fashion".

2001: Mugler retires from fashion to concentrate on other outlets, including fragrance lines and his love of photography.