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Louis Vuitton stage a Japanese extravaganza for latest Cruise show - complete with anime-inspired bags

Outside Kyoto, atop a bridge between two valleys, Nicholas Ghesquière held his fourth Cruise show for Louis Vuitton. It was the most spectacular as well as the furthest-flung of shows. Guests travelled for 24 hours to watch a 20-minute carnival of style. The pristine white-carpeted catwalk was so long that it incorporated what looked like airport-style conveyor belts to speed things up.

That's as it should be, because Cruise collections are really for women who prefer to spend the winter in tropical countries, and have a lot of experience of airports and no use at all for a fluffy coat or woolly jumper.

Ghesquière has always chosen world-beating modernist buildings for his Cruise collections, but for sheer drama this surpassed even Bob Hope's house in Palm Springs - home to the Cruise show two years ago - or last year's Niterói Museum in Rio. That was simply a spaceship perched on a rock by the sea. This year’s was set on a causeway through thick forest into what looked like a Bond villain's lair.

Stars including Michelle Williams, Jennifer Connolly and Game of Thrones' Sophie Turner sat on steel benches to enjoy the designer's take on Paris-Meets-Japan. No one will say how much the extravaganza costs, but other designers estimate it's around £5m for those few theatrical minutes.

Sparkly sequin mini-dresses were emblazoned with kabuki masks. Japanese manga had an outing in the prints on trouser suits. There were jackets and trousers made from the material of obi belts - the traditional belt that ties round a kimono. Embroidery on a series of jackets and dresses looked like a classical Japanese landscape of clouds and pine trees. There were even hats that nodded to samurai armour. After all, this was the culmination of Ghesquière's 20-year love affair with Japan.

But the Vuitton woman is defiantly urban and there was a lot of street style in the tie-waisted dresses, leopard prints, leather shorts and punk studs on nipped-in leather jackets. Those, though they looked like something an elegant Hell's Angel might wear, were in fact inspired by a Japanese women's biker film - Stray Cat Rock - which Ghesquière had watched on an early visit to Tokyo. And perhaps those Biker girls also wore the cowboy boots that accompanied every look.

This being Vuitton, there were gorgeous accessories aplenty - neat black city bags on chains and, in a nod to anime, playful little clutches with eye cutouts. But there was more to the show than the location - surely the most beautiful ever - and the sharp cut of the designs on show.

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