PARIS — Hunter Schafer is the new face of Angel, the blockbuster women’s fragrance from Mugler.
The trans model — who broke barriers on the runway then quickly rose to fame in HBO’s “Euphoria” — will be in the “Hunger Games” prequel, due out in November.
Schafer is to appear in the campaign for Angel Elixir, a new scent, in March worldwide.
“She’s been a friend of the Mugler house,” said Danièle Lahana-Aidenbaum in her first interview since becoming global president of Mugler Fashion and Fragrance last October. “She was one of the stars of Casey’s show in 2021.”
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That’s Casey Cadwallader, Mugler creative director, who helped pick Schafer to front Angel.
“She’s a perfect face for Angel,” Lahana-Aidenbaum continued. “She’s very modern, the icon of her generation and talks to the younger generation immediately because she’s very committed and talented.”
The executive highlighted Schafer’s strong feminine power, too.
“When you like Mugler, you love Mugler — there is no in-between,” Lahana-Aidenbaum said.
After Schafer initially met with the Mugler executives, the actress sent them a drawing she made of a hand with wings reaching for a star-shaped bottle.
“We want faces and people working for the brand that have this commitment,” Lahana-Aidenbaum continued. “So, definitely, she’s the face of the future for us.”
Elixir’s campaign is about transformation. Cadwallader worked alongside Quentin Deronzier and Publicis Luxe on its conception.
In the video spot, Schafer struts down a catwalk wearing a black catsuit designed by Cadwallader. Then she’s running up it, by a cityscape and toward a star-spangled sky, until the pathway goes vertical. She dangles from it and lets herself fall — only to collide with a shooting star.
Schafer metamorphosizes into a celestial being, floating in space, dressed in a sheer, sparkly catsuit. That was redesigned digitally by Cadwallader based on a vintage catsuit by Thierry Mugler and a 3D scan of Schafer’s body.
The spot is set to the song “Dreamer,” by Charli XCX, which includes the line “I’m an angel in the atmosphere.”
“So it was meant to be,” Lahana-Aidenbaum said.
The print image was lensed by Harley Weir. Like the campaign, Elixir the fragrance will launch in March.
Its juice was made by IFF perfumers Anne Flipo and Domitille Michalon Bertier, with L’Oréal’s olfactory department. The scent contains white floral notes, marking the first time any Angel juice has contained flowers.
“I love to say this is the Angel you don’t expect,” Lahana-Aidenbaum said. She added, however, that all Angel fragrances attract passionate customers.
“We have very loyal consumers, and we hope we’ll be able to recruit new loyal consumers to Angel, thanks to the launch of Elixir,” she said.
Younger people are in mind, especially Millennials and Gen Zers.
“It’s super important for us, because we want Angel to be even bigger,” the executive said.
The core market for the original Angel scent is Europe, where it ranks among the top 11 women’s fragrances. In France, it’s in the top six.
“But we need to be bigger in the U.S.,” said Lahana-Aidenbaum, explaining to do that it is important to have a flanker that’s less polarizing and younger marketing-wise than the original eau de parfum.
“We have big ambitions [for] Elixir,” she said.
Lahana-Aidenbaum would not discuss sales projections, but according to industry sources, Elixir — which comes in a dark-blue, star-shaped, refillable bottle — could generate 70 million euros in first-year retail sales.
“The women who love Angel are crazy about it,” she said, giving as an example how after Mugler launched 300 Angel digital collectables as part of the fragrance’s 30th anniversary celebration, they were all sold out in less than one minute.
Mugler fashion returned to the Paris runway on Jan. 27 with an experimental format for its fall 2022 ready-to-wear collection.
It was the first in-person fashion display held by Mugler since it was acquired by L’Oréal in March 2020. Clips of the show online racked up 200 million views on social media and had an engagement rate of 10 percent, according to the brand.