Vice Style

Nicola, on the right, with Mugler muse, Rico. Photo by Mariano Vivanco.

Designer Nicola Formichetti was born in Japan and raised in Italy, which is the fashion-industry equivalent of an anorexic midget with arms like Popeye deciding to become a jockey. Nicola arrived in London in his early 20s and since then has helped launch the careers of young British titans Gareth Pugh and Kim Jones. He’s best known, however, as the creative director of Mugler, the label founded by and named after a man formerly known as Thierry who once designed clothing that resembled insect exoskeletons and transformed the torsos of models into motorcycles and later abandoned the fashion world to become “Manfred”—a muscle-bound behemoth with nipples that look like they’ve been enlarged with a toilet plunger.

In January, Nicola dropped the “Thierry” and debuted the revamped Mugler line to almost unanimous praise, but reinvigorating the left-for-dead brand is just one of his many hobbies. In his spare seconds he is also the fashion director for Lady Gaga, Vogue Hommes Japan (which is unarguably one of the best menswear magazines on the planet), and Uniqlo.

I first met Nicola when artist Matthew Stone was assisting him on a project and they scouted me as a model outside Koko, a music venue in Camden. Nicola took photos of me for the McQ by Alexander McQueen line, and shortly after that I found myself working for him full-time at Dazed & Confused, where he was a super-young fashion boss doing lots of smart and beautiful things.

Today Nicola lives in New York, but I met up with him recently at a hotel in Central London during the scant hours he had between creating his first Mugler show in Paris (which took place in January) and preparing Lady Gaga for the Grammys.