Mugler casts a female bodybuilder to sell its first handbags by Miguel Castro Freitas

Mugler has unveiled the first handbags of Miguel Castro Freitas' tenure as creative director — the Aurora and Lua lines — alongside a campaign that places a female bodybuilder at its centre.

Shot by photographer Chris Lensz, the campaign frames its protagonist through the language of classic portraiture and late-19th-century sculpture studies, presenting muscled, sculpted strength as a form of refined elegance rather than spectacle. It is a deliberate restatement of one of the house's oldest ideas; the celebration of the body. The bags, the house said in a statement, are meant to exist "in dialogue" with a body that challenges conventional notions of femininity.

A renewed push into the category

These are the first bags Castro Freitas has designed for the house. For the house, the launch marks the start of a new leather goods chapter.

At the centre of the offer is the Aurora, named after the creative director's mother and derived from the Latin for dawn. It reinterprets a rare design from Manfred Thierry Mugler's spring/summer 2002 "Franges et clous" collection, famously photographed by Helmut Newton, updated with a moulded construction, a raw-edged interior and the designer's signature "monolith" metallic detail. Crafted in Italy, it comes in black, taupe and a roccia python-effect finish. The second line, Lua (Portuguese for moon), takes a crescent silhouette in hand-folded supple calf leather, offered in black and roccia python-effect across a classic shoulder style and a larger city bag.

Notably, the python is an effect, not the real thing. Mugler has refused furs and exotic skins since Manfred's era, a position that quietly separates it from many luxury peers still working in exotics.

"For me, handbags are our most intimate objects. They become an extension of one's body and carry memory with time," Castro Freitas said in a statement. "With Aurora and Lua, I wanted to create pieces that honour Mugler's extraordinary heritage while introducing my expression for leather goods that is both sculptural and deeply sensual."

Mugler has been owned by French beauty group L'Oréal since 2019, when L'Oréal acquired the fragrance division of Clarins Group, including Thierry Mugler's fashion arm, in a deal covering activities worth roughly 340 million euros in annual sales at the time.

Castro Freitas, a Portuguese designer trained at Central Saint Martins, was named creative director in March 2025 and joined the house on April 1, succeeding Casey Cadwallader, whose seven-year tenure turned Mugler into a pop-culture fixture on stars from Beyoncé to Dua Lipa.

Before Mugler, Castro Freitas built a two-decade CV under some of the industry's most influential names, including John Galliano and later Raf Simons at Dior, Stefano Pilati at Yves Saint Laurent, Alber Elbaz at Lanvin, and head of womenswear at Dries Van Noten, followed by a run as creative director of Sportmax. His debut ready-to-wear collection for Mugler, "Stardust Aphrodite," shown in Paris in September 2025, was widely read as a more measured, more commercial recalibration of the house's theatrics.