“I’m still trying to figure out who my icons are and what people come to the brand for,” said Casey Cadwallader with commendable frankness at Mugler’s Pre-Fall appointment. Yet the answers seemed right there, arrayed on the racks behind him.

Returned were Cadwallader’s multi-panel, 32-seam jeans and jackets, this time in green velvet as well as denim, plus a cotton patterned with the season’s patchwork collage, Le Corbusier–inspired print—informal pieces, but special via the particularity of their construction.

Way more dressed up, yet heavily sportswear inflected, was a voluptuous tuxedo jacket in black wool that featured hourglass-enhanced hips in duchesse satin with neoprene flex. This came teamed with a kicky synth-crepe pant that featured a preprepared VPL.

A blue body-con dress in synthetic jersey had a wetsuit half-zip and patches of compression material designed to erect the chest and elevate the bosom. This arrangement was external here but applied from inside in other Cadwallader garments; he called it his “secret compression corset.”

His stirrup “compression” leggings, with their ergonomically arranged grid of metal-pressed stripes, were a version of Thierry Mugler’s original corsetry reimagined for the Pilates age. Other leggings in gunmetal or bronze stretch taffeta, teamed with stiff-looking but flexible jackets, pulled taut when worn to resemble a layer of seamless liquid metal that was very Avengers-ready. Cadwallader is producing performancewear without the tiresome pretense that his customer will be wearing the clothes to set a personal best in. The point is to look your personal best. Somewhere in between Nike ACG and Eres—and distinctly flavored with the enduring codes of Mugler—Cadwallader’s is a clever formula to explore.

Vogue.com