Cardi B Wore 4 Vintage Mugler Outfits to the Grammys Last Night

This is just the second time in 25 years that Mugler has presented looks from their archive to dress a celebrity.

Last night at the Grammy Awards, Cardi B wore not one, not two, but four looks from Thierry Mugler’s archives. The French designer is the subject of a massive upcoming exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, which brings over 140 looks from his decades as fashion’s Agent Provocateur, between 1973 and 2001, under one roof. Several of these looks were photographed on model Josephine Skriver for our March issue, and you can read the cover story on the fascinating Mr Mugler here.

In celebration of this exhibit, no doubt, Cardi B donned four jaw-dropping looks from the fashion house’s archive for the awards ceremony last night, where she was nominated for five awards. “The house of Mugler exclusively opened its iconic archives to dress Cardi B for the 61st Annual Grammy Awards 2019,” states a press release from the brand, according to Refinery29. “Cardi B wore four different looks from the Mugler archives; on the red carpet, on stage and while she accepted her Grammy Award for best rap album of the year.” The brand also confirmed that this was just the second time in 25 years that they had presented archival looks to dress a celebrity.

For her first Mugler appearance of the evening, Cardi made a dramatic entrance in a Fall 1995 Haute Couture creation that required the help of multiple people just to get her out of the car and on to the red carpet. And no wonder: with a floor-length sheath skirt that fans out spectacularly at the waist into a pink satin open shell shape, revealing a sequin bodysuit underneath, you’d need a helping hand or two. Multiple strings of pearls and elbow-length pink satin gloves completed the instantly-viral look.

“What a Superb Stormy Venus!!” wrote Mugler in an Instagram post. The elaborate gown is a representation of Botticelli’s iconic 15th century ‘Birth of Venus’ painting, depicting the newly-born but fully-grown goddess Venus standing in a giant open shell that experts have concluded is a scallop shell.

For her performance of her new single ‘Money,’ Cardi donned an ensemble from the designer’s Fall 1995 collection: a floor-length purple duchess satin and black velvet coat, which she threw off to reveal a rhinestone-embellished, cheetah-print bodysuit. Driving the drama dial up even higher, halfway through the performance she added some bold plumage to her look in the form of “a black organza peacock crinoline with black velvet panther flocking.”

Later, to accept her Best Rap Album award for ‘Invasion of Privacy’ (the first-ever solo female artist to win this award!), she changed into a fringed white crepe shawl dress from Mugler’s Spring 1997 Couture collection, with matching white fringed gloves of course.

And this wasn’t the only Mugler sighting in recent days. Miley Cyrus dipped into their present-day collections for the Grammys, wearing a pantsuit from their Pre-Fall 2019 line, and Kim Kardashian wore a beaded, body-hugging Mugler dress from 1983 for her appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last week.