It was pure film noir fantasy, from the moment we embarked on our candlelit adventure through the halls of Paris' Natural History Museum to the last crescendo of scary-movie music as the final model sashayed through the wrought iron stage doors.
'I've been watching lots of Penelope Cruz movies,' explained Stuart Vevers backstage. The Spanish actress is the newest face of the brand and its creative director has been suitably smitten.
'I wanted a character with some depth, so spent a while taking stills from my favourite scenes in her oeuvre, and this femme fatale emerged.'
The femme fatale didn't just emerge, she arrived. In thigh-high ribbed stockings with a flicker of suspender peeping out from the slit in her stiff leather pencil skirt, she scintillated down the long dimly lit catwalk. Like something straight out of an Almodovar film she was mysterious in hard leather detective coats with rounded sleeves, and spindly ankle-strap heels with provocative chains running up the spine of the heel, or plumes of hair swishing behind her as she walked.
Vevers background as a handbag designer manifested itself in the pure craftwork of the leather multiple bonded seams, embossed floral patterns, graphic patchworks of greys and teals.
I went to Bilbao for the first time and the architecture of the city the shadows and graphic shapes inspired this sort of piecing together of different materials, he said. The colours were indeed muted but masterfully put together midnight blues, deep teals, luxurious creams and a flash of magenta in a tan handbag.
There was also a head to toe pillar-box red an enormous fur complete with thigh high red socks. After all, what self-respecting siren would leave her wardrobe without a flash of scarlet?
