Miguel Castro Freitas Unveils First Mugler Collection and Campaign

PARIS — Miguel Castro Freitas is getting a jump on the glut of first collections by new creative directors arriving in stores next season.

Freitas, who unveiled his spring 2026 line for Mugler on Oct. 2 amid a raft of designer debuts during Paris Fashion Week, is doing a little reverse engineering by dropping his cruise collection in stores this month.


“I like to call it the Ground Zero collection,” he told WWD in an exclusive interview.

Eschewing traditional seasonal labels, Freitas has dubbed it “The Wardrobe of Identities,” explaining that it represents the building blocks of his Mugler wardrobe. He revealed the collection with the release on Monday of his first campaign for the house.

Whereas his predecessor Casey Cadwallader earned a reputation for body-conscious designs and bombastic runway displays of fashion fierceness, Freitas wants to recenter the label’s tailoring heritage with a contemporary spin on the power dressing pioneered by founder Manfred Thierry Mugler.


“The show is more laboratorial, a way of projecting ideas, building the fantasy, and The Wardrobe of Identities is a more pragmatic approach, so it’s really focused on creating pieces that carry the DNA of the house, but in a way that reflects the times that we live in,” he said.

The collection spans all categories, from leather coats to oversize suit jackets, as well as draped dresses and blouses made of materials ranging from slinky satin to glossy latex.


“It’s translating pieces that normally would be considered quite bourgeois and conservative, but making them in a material that is a different signifier,” he said. “It’s really about finding sensuality in not only silhouettes, but also textures.”


The campaign, shot by Reto Schmid and styled by Robbie Spencer, explores the idea of multiple identities through mirror images of model Libby Bennett in minimal makeup for day, or full glam for evening.

“Since the wardrobe is called Wardrobe of Identities, we wanted to start by playing also with the idea of duality, the fact that we are not just one person, one dimension — there’s all these different sides to us,” Freitas said.


His debut runway collection, titled “Stardust Aphrodite,” also toggled between personalities. The first in a planned trilogy, it walked a tightrope between Mugler’s penchant for showgirl glamour and the razor-sharp suits he was known for.

The next one will lean even more into tailoring, Freitas said. One of his key references is “Mildred Pierce,” the 1945 film noir starring Joan Crawford that provided an early template for power dressing.

A 2004 womenswear graduate of Central Saint Martins, the Portuguese-born designer has held roles at Dior under John Galliano, Yves Saint Laurent under Stefano Pilati and Lanvin under Alber Elbaz. Most notably, he was head of tailoring at Dior during Raf Simons’ tenure, and head of womenswear at Dries Van Noten, working alongside the label’s founder.

Adrian Corsin, managing director of Mugler Fashion, hailed Freitas’ arrival as a “pivotal” moment for the brand.

“This collection, The Wardrobe of Identities, is his first vision of proposing a true wardrobe, taking the house really into the woman’s closet and beyond the sphere of spectacle and showmanship,” he said.

“The campaign is the beginning of his expression of a new Mugler woman — strong, complex, erotically charged, fiercely independent — and a bold approach to storytelling and an allegorical world building that the house will unveil step by step,” the executive added.

Freitas believes that in recent years, luxury has leaned too far toward streetwear. “I hear all my girlfriends complaining about the fact that when they go to a boutique, they cannot find good tailoring these days, which I find really shocking,” he said.

“One thing is to be inspired by the street, another thing is to mimic what’s happening on the street,” he continued. “I’ve always been inspired by streetwear as well, but I made the conscious decision to stay away as much as possible from that and to clear that out.”


His vision of tailoring is influenced both by the house’s archives and his love for the golden age of Hollywood. “Thierry Mugler was, as I am, a big fan of the ‘40s,” Freitas noted. “He is the father of retrofuturism.”

While his bold shoulder constructions might bring to mind the ’80s, he doesn’t trace them to any particular era.


“I’ve been doing a very deep dig into the archives of the house, not to copy it, not to do literal revisitations of the archives, but more to study the essence of it,” he said. “What I like to do mostly is to find the ‘fil rouge’ between all these different periods: what is it that Manfred was obsessed with somehow, even if he wasn’t aware of it?”

Celebrities including Pamela Anderson, Naomi Watts, Emma Mackey and Naomi Campbell have already worn pieces from the pre-collection, while Cynthia Erivo, Hailey Bieber and Tracee Ellis Ross have donned runway looks on the red carpet.


Countless others have embraced archival Mugler designs over the years, from Kim Kardashian at the 2019 Met Gala to Zendaya at the “Dune: Part Two” London premiere. 


“I’m not opposed to the idea of having archive pieces being worn by celebrities. The house is so rich, and there’s so many incredible, magnificent pieces from Mugler that deserve to see the light of day again,” Freitas said.

“But I think it’s very, very important to also install the idea that we are starting a new era for the brand, and we intend to honor the legacy of the house, but also catapult it into the future,” he added.