Bertrand Guyon has never been to this part of the world, and yet the new design director of legendary Paris couture house Schiaparelli has unwittingly become the dernier cri for Australia's most stylish women.
Cate Blanchett wore Schiaparelli's dusky sky???blue, zippered dress, covered with fluttering 3D love hearts, when she attended the 2015 Film Independent Spirit Awards in California in   February. Then Melissa George indulged in a little game of sartorial peek???a-boo with Schiaparelli's organza coat, shirt and shorts for the 68th Cannes Film Festival before choosing a tulle dress, embroidered with tiny feather stars, for the 2015 amfAR gala, both held in the South of France in   May. Meanwhile, Ruby Rose, hosting the 2015 MTV European Music Awards in Milan, had a whole Schiaparelli wardrobe with which to play.
It's evidence enough that when ready cash, an appreciation for the traditional craft of haute couture and an insouciant disregard for "Normcore" come together, Guyon is the man Australians (quietly) go to for a fix of real luxury. "When I think of Australia, I think of movies and Australian film stars, such as Cate Blanchett, Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts and Toni Colette," says the 50-year-old Breton who speaks in slow, thoughtful sentences. 
"Australia appears to be a land of contrasts: the indigenous Australian art - a very old tradition and yet very contemporary-looking at the same time - versus the modern metropolis that is Sydney, with its Opera House, its beaches and its dynamism."
While Guyon has a pretty good handle on Australia without actually ever having been here, few Australians will have heard of him; perhaps even fewer still of Elsa Schiaparelli.
A quick history lesson: Schiaparelli (pronounced Skee-app-a-rell-i) was the fashion world's original enfant terrible, dominating 1930-40s Paris fashion with a series of groundbreaking firsts: the first to mix fashion with contemporary fine art; the first to inject a sense of fun and subversive irreverence into the bourgeois world of haute couture; the first to "sponsor" sporting personalities by dressing them in her own sportswear designs.
In fact, it was with sportswear that Schiaparelli had her initial success in 1927. "It all started with a hand-knitted jumper featuring a trompe-l'??il bow motif," explains Guyon of the masterstroke that was to Schiaparelli what the Little Black Dress was to Chanel: a perfectly pitched response to the changing roles of women in society with something that was simple, wearable, chic.
And yet as somebody who would go on to become one of the 20th century's most influential designers, Schiaparelli's rich legacy has long been overshadowed by that of her biggest rival, Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel.
More poetic than Chanel's prosaic approach, Schiaparelli's lobster-painted dresses, flying acrobat jacket fastenings and cocktail hats in the shape of high-heeled shoes have gained iconic status, but at the expense of her real contribution to fashion - the effects of which still reverberate through women's wardrobes today.
Schiaparelli was the first to use visible zips (1929), create the wrap-dress (1930) and use trompe l'??il print effects. As World War II gained momentum, Schiaparelli designed the first bomb shelter-ready jumpsuits with maxi pockets to save on carrying a handbag (1939); the first capsule travelling/escaping wardrobe (1946 - six dresses, one reversible coat and three folding hats, all weighing just over 5 kilograms) and a way of getting around the fact that her atelier had gone on strike.In 1949 Schiaparelli presented a collection of designs with pins, fabric swatches and no buttonholes, and an evening dress with a visible bra - surely the first taste of 1970s punk and 1990s deconstructionism to come.

Shock factor
"It's incredible isn't it?" Guyon says of Schiaparelli's massive, forgotten legacy. "I don't think that she set out to shock with her creations. She was just being herself. She just did what she wanted to do."
While shock factor might be the leitmotif of Schiaparelli's back catalogue (she even named one of her perfumes Shocking!) it would be hard today to be as controversial without reverting to the outlandish, the overtly sexual and the obnoxious. "We are exposed to so much visual information and strong sexuality that we have become desensitised," Guyon says. "Even the most provocative designers are not really shocking any more."
Yet that is exactly what Guyon has done with his new line for the label, a hybrid of ready-to-wear and haute couture - Pr&ecirc;t???&agrave;???Couture - which was unveiled in a static presentation during the spring-summer 2016 Paris Pr&ecirc;t???&agrave;???Porter collections last month.
"If you buy something off the peg in a ready-to-wear boutique you can't change anything. On the other hand, if you order from a couture collection it's very expensive because the garment is created specifically for your body and the fabrics and embroideries are the very best. With this range, the idea is that a client can buy something in a standard size but then she can change a little something if she wants. She might want it sleeveless; she might want a different collar or the skirt length to be a bit longer."
But this new hybrid collection is much more than just an opportunity for a bit of exclusive hem tweaking. "I wanted to do something different from the ready-to-wear you see everywhere else. After all, this is the only Schiaparelli store in the world. It's very exclusive," says Guyon, whose raised eyebrow highlights the moot point about luxury today: how can you claim to be a purveyor of luxury when the very things you are flogging are available in huge quantities and in stores that have become as common as McDonald's?
"When a client comes to Schiaparelli, it's because she wants something special and different. You wouldn't come here to buy a boring grey jacket, would you?"
No, you wouldn't.
But you would go to Schiaparelli if you wanted a full-length leather gilet, entirely covered in a children's picture book patchwork of love hearts, shooting stars and flowers in a My Little Pony fantasy landscape.
What about an A-line, button-through denim skirt embroidered with fluorescent yarns, paired with a sequined sleeveless pullover and pussycat bow blouse coloured "Shocking Pink", the particular shade of fuchsia that Schiaparelli claimed as her own?
The LSD-loudness of this 20-Teens-does-1970s-doing-1930s vibe turns into a whisper as Guyon flaunts his wizardry with silk chiffon. Harlequin-patterned, floor-length dresses of sugary-coloured froth come in Ladur&eacute;e macaroon shades of rose petal-pink, pistachio green and baby blue (starting price: ???3000 [$4700]).
And there are - dare I even say it - clothes for the everyday. Simple, sportif shapes - a T-shirt dress, tailored shorts and shell tops; all sliced from jacquard with a dense pattern of lips, hearts and padlocks.
"I find this collection very eclectic. It is colourful and different from what is already out there," says Farida Khelfa, the 50-something Schiaparelli brand ambassador and Paris style icon who earned her reputation when she was muse to both Azzedine Ala&iuml;a and Jean-Paul Gaultier in the 1990s. "Today, fashion is a bit too manufactured. We need a bit of craziness in fashion. Otherwise it's just dead; just commercial. Fashion has to bring something unreal that puts you on a different level. So maybe what fashion needs right now is more of a dream."
But a dream that sells, right?
"Absolutely," says Guyon, whose first couture collection for the house (for autumn-winter 2015) was the label's best selling so far. "I don't want to create clothes only for a fashion photograph or a museum."

Serendipity
Watching over Guyon and the sales ledger of this 88-year-old brand is Italian Diego Della Valle, chief executive of the Tod's Group (which includes Tod's, Hogan and Roger Vivier), who bought the archives and rights to Schiaparelli in 2006. "[Our aim is to] get back to the ???dream' and Schiaparelli's modernity," Della Valle said at the time. "The aim is not to pursue a fashion diktat, but to create a product that is the best you can get in terms of taste and quality, with all the necessary time it needs to be realised." Seven years later, in   July 2013, Christian Lacroix unveiled a one-off couture collection for the house, giving this sleeping beauty of a fashion label a wake-up kiss in a way that only Lacroix could. Surely, in Lacroix's genius, Schiaparelli had found its Prince Charming?
Erm, no.
Rumour has it that Lacroix, already exhausted by the demands of creating six collections a year for his by then defunct line, didn't want the job full-time; and so in   September of the same year, it was announced that Della Valle had poached the Italian designer Marco Zanini from Rochas.
Zanini's debut, for the spring-summer 2014 haute couture season, was the first Schiaparelli couture runway show since 1954, the same year that Schiaparelli closed her atelier for good. But Zanini's second collection for the house would prove to be his last, after, it has been said, there were irreconcilable differences of opinion between his and Della Valle's vision.
Just when it felt like the Schiaparelli comeback had hit a dry run, the relatively unknown Bertrand Guyon was hired. And yet this latest appointment seems less like another round of musical couture chairs and more like a serendipitous meeting of minds. "Yes," Guyon nods in quiet contemplation. "I think so too."
There are, after all, significant similarities between Elsa and Bertrand.
For a start, both have faced being an outsider in the notoriously bitchy environ of Paris: Guyon being from Brittany ("Brittany was once a separate country from France and Bretons are known for being very proud and stubborn") and Schiaparelli being an Italian ("Hers was at a time when anyone coming from below France was seen as a peasant").
Guyon's other significant link is via Hubert de Givenchy, the couturier who trained as Schiaparelli's prot&eacute;g&eacute; for six years and who, in turn, taught Guyon. "Hubert taught me all about discipline and about being honest with yourself and with others," says Guyon who graduated from Paris' &Eacute;cole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne in 1988, and who also learnt his craft with Galliano, McQueen, Lacroix and Valentino.
"Hubert told me lots of funny stories about the time he spent with Schiaparelli. She liked him a lot and they became good friends; often going out to the theatre or opera. It was on one of these occasions that Schiaparelli went out wearing two completely different shoes. Hubert said, ???Excuse me, Madame, but I think there is something wrong with your shoes'. She answered ???No, Hubert, that's fashion'. She was completely in her own world."
It's a world where here, at 21 Place Vend&ocirc;me, the original Schiaparelli address right next door to the Paris Ritz, Elsa's legacy looms large. There's the furniture she once owned, the original gowns she designed on dressmaker's dummies; her fashion sketches hang on the walls. But bigger than these trinkets is the spirit of Elsa (who died in her sleep in 1973 and about whose death Yves Saint Laurent famously said: "When she died, Chic closed her eyes. Chic alone could have done so"), which you can still feel.
How difficult is it, then, for Guyon to pay homage to Schiaparelli's heritage while brushing it aside to make way for the future?
"It's very difficult. I don't and I can't forget the past. But it's helped me to define my own way of creating Schiaparelli. I could have had my own brand if I had wanted to, but I was always happy to work with great designers. And here, Elsa Schiaparelli is the star. I am happy to be behind her."
As the interview wraps up, talk inevitably turns to his need for some rest and the recommendation that he should come to Australia, the home of so many women who love what he does.
"Ah, that would be nice, wouldn't it," he says breaking into a great big smile. "When I think of Australia I think of surfing, the ocean, the waves and those beautiful beaches. Oh, and Priscilla. I have a vision of Priscilla on the roof of a bus going through dry landscapes with clouds of dust and a silver cape flowing behind her."
Suddenly that seems less like Australia and more like Schiaparelli. Shocking.